Comments on: Death, with Compound Interest

By: Linh Dinh

Linh Dinh — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:40:34 +0000

Hi Angela,
Here’s Robert Walser, writing in 1917 about the automobile:
For the children of poor folk the country road in summer is like a playroom. Where else can they go, seeing that the gardens are selfishly closed to them? Woe to the automobiles blustering by, as they ride coldly and maliciously into the children’s games, into the child’s heaven, so that small innocent human beings are in danger of being crushed to a pulp. The terrible thought that a child actually can be run over by such a clumsy triumphal car, I dare not think it, otherwise my wrath will seduce me to coarse expressions, with which it is well known nothing much ever gets done.”
To people sitting in a blustering dust-churning automobile I always present my austere and angry face, and they do not deserve a better one. Then they believe that I am a spy, a plainclothes policeman, delegated by high officials and authorities to spy on the traffic, to note down the numbers of vehicles, and later to report them. I always then look darkly at the wheels, at the car as a whole, but never at its occupants, whom I despise, and this in no way personally, but purely on principle; for I do not understand, and I never shall understand, how it can be a pleasure to hurtle past all the images and objects which our beautiful earth displays, as if one had gone mad and had to accelerate for fear of misery and despair. In fact, I love repose and all that reposes. I love thrift and moderation and am in my inmost self, in God’s name, unfriendly toward any agitation and haste. More than what is true I need not say. And because of these words the driving of automobiles will certainly not be discontinued, nor its evil air-polluting smell, which nobody for sure particularly loves or esteems. It would be unnatural if someone’s nostrils were to love and inhale with relish that which for all correct nostrils, at times, depending perhaps on the mood one is in, outrages and evokes revulsion. Enough, and no harm meant. And now walk on. Oh, it is heavenly and good and in simplicity most ancient to walk on foot, provided of course one’s shoes or boots are in order.
[from "The Walk," as translated from the German by Christopher Middleton]

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:34:14 +0000

I am 26, and I have yet to give up my choo-choo trains.

By: Angela

Angela — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 04:07:41 +0000

Bizarre! But then… I suppose that makes “sense,” too. One of the rites of passage in this culture is getting your driver’s license. At that time, you’re required to trade in all those silly childhood toys — choo-choo trains, friendly plastic toy cars, and girly bikes, all with colorful, painted, exaggerated smiley faces — for weapons of mass destruction.

By: Linh Dinh

Linh Dinh — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:35:38 +0000

Hi Angela,
A news item, today:
“People readily see faces and traits in cars, and a new study suggests that they prefer cars to appear dominant, masculine and angry.”

By: Angela

Angela — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 02:40:49 +0000

Carl Jung and his student Joseph Campbell both warned of the dangers of the Western obsession with the overdeveloped, dark, male side of the collective unconscious, as well as our demonization of the feminine, the anima. Since then, our society has grown sicker and sicker, until at last, we have reached a psychotic world where we see our shadow lurking around every corner. Now that our erect phallic skyscrapers have now been exposed as naked and susceptible to dark heroes/terrorists of any and every stripe who value only the destructive, violent side of the animus, we build our bunkers below ground, thicker and wider; our guided missiles, more targeted, more potent. Those who rob, plunder, rape, and kill are heroicized. Meanwhile, we demonize and fetishize the feminine, the anima, casting her at best, as seductress and whore, at worst, mere holes, receptacles for our most violent fantasies that are carried out with glee by, and applause for, our dark heroes. Many have called Jung’s theories bunk, but it makes a hell of a lot of sense to me right now. Villain or hero? Predator or prey? We’ll keep picking our poison until we poison ourselves to death.