meaning

I like the multiplicity of books, because each book is different in the mind of each reader. It's the same with this film - if 300 people are in a cinema watching it, they will all see a different film, so in a way there are thousands of different versions of "Caché (Hidden)". The point being that, despite what TV shows us, and what the news stories tell us, there is never just one truth, there is only personal truth.

A translator, caught in the space between two tongues. Such people tend to come a little bit unglued from the task of trying to convey meaning from one code to the other. The transfer is never safe, the meaning changes in the channel _ becomes tinted, adulterated, absurd, stronger.

One of the central tenets of the Western worldview is that one should always be engaged in some kind of outward task. Thus, the Westerner structures his time__ncluding, sometimes, even his leisure time__s a series of discrete programmed activities which he must submit to in order to tick off from an actual or virtual list. One need only observe the expression on his face as he ploughs through yet another family outing, cultural event, or gruelling exercise routine to realise that his aim in life is not so much to live in the present moment as it is to work down a never-ending list. If one asks him how he is doing, he is most likely to respond with an artificial smile, and something along the lines of, __ine, thank you _ very busy of course!_ In many cases, he is not fine at all, but confused, exhausted, and fundamentally unhappy. In contrast, most people living in a country such as Kenya in Africa do not share in the Western worldview that it is noble or worthwhile to spend all of one__ time rushing around from one task to the next. When Westerners go to Kenya and do as they are wont to do, they are met with peels of laughter and cries of __zungu_, which is Swahili for __esterner_. The literal translation of __zungu_ is __ne who moves around_, __o go round and round_, or __o turn around in circles_.

In conscious life, we achieve some sense of ourselves as reasonably unified, coherent selves, and without this action would be impossible. But all this is merely at the __maginary_ level of the ego, which is no more than the tip of the iceberg of the human subject known to psychoanalysis. The ego is function or effect of a subject which is always dispersed, never identical with itself, strung out along the chains of the discourses which constitute it. There is a radical split between these two levels of being _ a gap most dramatically exemplified by the act of referring to myself in a sentence. When I say __omorrow I will mow the lawn,_ the ___ which I pronounce is an immediately intelligible, fairly stable point of reference which belies the murky depths of the ___ which does the pronouncing. The former ___ is known to linguistic theory as the __ubject of the enunciation_, the topic designated by my sentence; the latter ___, the one who speaks the sentence, is the __ubject of the enunciating_, the subject of the actual act of speaking. In the process of speaking and writing, these two _____ seem to achieve a rough sort of unity; but this unity is of an imaginary kind. The __ubject of the enunciating_, the actual speaking, writing human person, can never represent himself or herself fully in what is said: there is no sign which will, so to speak, sum up my entire being. I can only designate myself in language by a convenient pronoun. The pronoun ___ stands in for the ever-elusive subject, which will always slip through the nets of any particular piece of language; and this is equivalent to saying that I cannot __ean_ and __e_ simultaneously. To make this point, Lacan boldly rewrites Descartes__ __ think, therefore I am_ as: __ am not where I think, and I think where I am not.

Given the ease with which health infuses life with meaning and purpose, it is shocking how swiftly illness steals away those certainties_Time unused and only endured still vanishes, as if time itself is starving, and each day is swallowed whole, leaving no crumbs, no memory, no trace at all.

Not every conflict is necessarily neurotic; some amount of conflict is normal and healthy. In a similar sense suffering is not always a pathological phenomenon; rather than being a symptom of neurosis, suffering may well be a human achievement, especially if the suffering grows out of existential frustration... Existential frustration is neither pathological or pathogenic.

I sort of kind of said something a little like that but maybe not clearly enough to sound like that... But it's what I meant.

_breaking the heart of someone you still love is a rare horror, not funny to anyone, except perhaps Satan_and even his pleasure would be spoiled by not having had a hand in it, by the dumb, wasteful accident of the thing. The Devil wants meaning just like the rest of us.

History is the nothing people write about a nothing.

She [Beatrice] alone was still real for him, still implied meaning in the world, and beauty. Her nature became his landmark - what Melville would call, with more sobriety than we can now muster, his Greenwich Standard ...

. . .the most important philosophical question we can each ask ourselves is, __o I or do I not wish to commit suicide?_ If we say, __o I do not,_ as most of us would, it is because we have reasons for living, or at the very least real hope that we can find such reasons. Then the next question is: what are the reasons I personally have for saying __o_ to that question? The answer contains the meaning of my life.

We think of ourselves as failures, rather than renounce our belief in the possibility of perfection. We hang on to the hope of eternal love by denying even its temporary validity. It´s less painful to think 'I'm shallow', 'She's self centred', 'We couldn't communicate', 'It was all just physical', than to accept the simple fact that love is a passing sensation, for reasons beyond our control and even beyond our personalities. But who can reassure himself with his own rationalizations? No argument can fill the void of a dead feeling -- that reminder of the ultimate void, our final inconstancy. We're untrue even to life.

Everything did mean something.

When I reached the street I didn't know whether to go right or left. Soon I'd have to start acting like a person who cared about what happened to him.

Life is about finding . . .what works best for you.

When you win, the rules change, and you find you__e lost

If only the physical aspects of hatha yoga are used, it is called ghatastha yoga (ghata means __hysical effort_). Modern expressions like __itness yoga_ and __ower yoga_ that flourish within gym classes are within the same category, even if they do not derive from the original exercises_ rhythm and succession. In many instances __ower yoga_ has a positive effect on physical health; but if there is no aim to ease the mind, to gain self-insight and control of your thoughts, and to experience the divine within you and within the universe, the deeper meaning of yoga and - possibly life - is lost.

Poetry doesn__ pay. But I need it. And so do you.