Some quotes from a friend

This is some quotes from a friend I hardly see nowadays (I'm in London, he's in the States) but I think about all the time. Hope you enjoy:)

There is just a special energy in certain places in the world.

It pays to be a bit of a poor bum at least for one year in one‘s life though, so you can smell the roses and begin to live deliberately!

In America, most people say, "Support our troops". I say, "Fuck you"!

In America, 90 percent of those working in philosophy think I'm gloomy. How can a philosopher not be gloomy? Who can adjust to this injustice? My only mission in life is to never adjust to our world's injustice. Of course I often fail, but it is my goal anyway.

It's nice to get in bed with a book and find more friends.

Life is communication(in all its many forms) and communication is always a loving struggle.

You and I and several others, let's start our own intellectual international community. We can dedicate our lives to freedom and against the tyranny of power... to create a "planet-wide inclusivist community"(Richard Rorty).

I remember when I was about ten years old, my dad took me to a big meeting of crazy religious leaders, and I'll never forget one preacher saying this, "When you lose the tears in your eyes, you have lost your calling and should get out of the church". The only great thing I've heard crazy religious people say in my life I think.

My goals are not what I would call modest, but they are certainly tempered with a decided despair and realism.

Any system can be shown to be logically coherent and true if one just accepts the truth of the system to begin with, but there is no non-human system we can touch to justify the basic terms of any system.

I recall, about ten years ago, my uncle tim, who at the time was a us senator, one of only 100 in the usa, he was visiting me and it was just he and i, i bugged him all nite, even when he went to the bathroom, and locked the door, i stood outside and talked. We started with politics and ended a long nite with phil and religion, and simply discovered we started at totally different places. therefore no amount of argument could reconcile our many differences. but, in the processof a long, honest, and sometimes angry discussion, we felt a solidiarity that transcended ideology , thru our sincere discussion we found respect and what i like to refer to as rapport. simply put, we made a 'relationship'.

旧文：四则

[原发表于校内网 30/09/2008]

1 死
我男友的爸爸彼得是个神气的老头，经常语出惊人。他两年前心脏病险些丧命，医生已经让家属前来做临终道别，可是他又神奇的活了过来。我和他在短暂的几次会谈中建立了深厚的友谊。他有一次说，“我十分期待死亡的那一天。活了这么多年，这世界变来变去也看够了，就想知道死了之后什么样。要是死了什么都没了那就没了，我也能欣然接受；要是还有一个另外的世界，我也挺想看看的。”人们怕死怕的要死，不敢说，不敢想。可是大千世界再怎么精彩，也有看够了的那一天。在那个时候，死亡可以是多么新鲜刺激的一件事情啊。
2 在乎
彼得家乱七八糟脏乱差，彼得抽烟喝酒无度，彼得作息时间没有规律⋯⋯问他，他只说一句“我不在乎。”我记得我小时候老劝我爷爷少抽烟，因为抽烟有害健康。现在想起来觉得挺逗的——我爷爷根本不在乎他健康不健康。
世界在老人眼里是完全不同的。
3 缺陷
谈到通讯的便捷，彼得说，“现在通讯这么方便，你想给墨西哥的人打电话就打，想给埃塞俄比亚的人打电话就打，你想和世界上任何一个人想说话就说话。我们有这么先进的技术保障，可是这个系统只有一个缺陷——你拿起电话，和他们没话说。”
4 辩论
我买了一本书，叫做《What's the Use of Truth》，内容是两个哲学家Richard Rorty和Pascal Engel关于真理的辩论。两个人洋洋洒洒地说了半天，我最后意识到，他们连互相都不能说服，又怎么能说服我呢？辩论争论讨论，目的从来就不是说服别人。在张嘴之前，倾听之前，我们就已经拿定主意，打好算盘。说了半天只是说给自己听罢了。

旧文：哭着过的新年

[原发表于校内网 03/01/2009]新年去daz家过的。两个人干掉两瓶香槟。然后看电视，一边是伦敦巴黎香港这些大城市大家庆祝放焰火，一边是加沙和以色列趁着圣诞和新年对着轰炸。然后我和daz就说起了津巴布韦北朝鲜肯尼亚刚果什么的，想起那些国家的好多人新年是怎么过的。。。还有中国的穷苦的农民什么的。。。

我想起了我路过的赞比亚的一个小村子，几十口子人，一帮孩子，村里就两个大的茅草屋，只要有旅游者路过孩子就追着车跑，希望人家能施舍点钱，他们新年是怎么过的呢？

我想起了南非Horizon农场的那帮人，那些被抛弃的孩子，残废的老人，老瞎子Paul，聋子双胞胎兄弟，不会说话只会傻笑的John，父母双亡的黑人三兄弟什么的。。。他们的新年是怎么度过的呢？

Daz说起了他的好多精神病人，他们的新年只能在精神病院度过，他们的家人又是怎么过年的呢？

四川地震受灾的灾民，他们得到足够的救助了么？他们怎么过新年？农历新年又怎么过？

我和Daz就忍不住哭了起来。

2008年，我毕业了，拿了一等，在伦敦找到了工作，自立更生了。可是我天天坐在电脑前编的东西我根本不在乎。我每月都给Shelter，英国癌症研究，Oxfam这些慈善机构捐款，可是我捐的那些钱真的是杯水车薪。我对爸妈也不够关心，不常打电话。

08年有什么好的，有什么值得骄傲的。我只希望我09年能多帮助别人，希望09年少点灾祸。

Bacon Day

The idea of doing a Bacon day has been hovering at the back of my (and Eddy's) head for ages; today, we finally made it - seeing the Francis Bacon exhibition in Tate Britain and having bacon sandwich at Southbank afterwards!

Francis Bacon was overwhelming. One of the themes of his works is the reoccurring image of Pope Innocent X, inspired by Velazquez's work. Velazquez's portrait of Pope Innocent X captured the Pope's fierce, powerful yet cruel look and generated an unsettling pressure upon the audience. Bacon, although he himself never saw the original painting by Velazquez, managed to recreate the same power and pressure. However it'd be utterly unfair to say that Bacon simply 'recreated' what Velazquez did in a cooler way. I feel that Bacon's use of colour (purple, bright yellow, etc.), his unique approach of painting (leaving almost half of the canvas uncovered by paint), the twisted sense of space created by his invention of the 'space frame', brought the theme to an unprecedented level. The despair, the suffering, the twisted power, were all interpreted so brutally in his various versions of the snarling and ghosty image of the Pope. Among all these interpretations, my favourite was this one without any doubt.

Many of Bacon's works focused on the idea that human nature is violent, merciless and greedy. In other words, Bacon was working on eliminating the distinction between the nature of human beings and that of animals. And one of the approaches Bacon chose to achieve this was the metamorphosis of human bodies, and bodies of animals (in which you can find influences of cubism on Bacon). The extremely disturbing images of humans, baboons, chimpanzees (I think Bacon definitely liked primates more than any other kind of animals) were something nobody who has been to the exhibition could ever forget. In one of his paintings, the sharp teeth and claws of a baboon were highlighted by white paint. And in Head I, the eyes and nose were almost removed, leaving a shapeshifted mouth with pointy teeth the only thing in the face.

Also, what really intrigued me and Eddy was the white arrows Bacon deliberately(of course deliberately, which artist would create a painting indeliberately?) added to many of his paintings. What do they signify? We were suspecting they were showing the direction of the movement of human bodies, or they serve the functionality to lead the eyes of the audience to move around the canvas. However, never forget the multi-interpreted nature of modern art and indeed the arrows could be anything :P

Eddy was saying that when you looking at a contemporary painting, it's interesting how your mind is trying to look for references to objects you're familiar with, due to the level of abstraction present in expressionism, cubism, etc. And that's exactly what I found interesting about modern art. It's all about the interpretation. It's nothing but the process of interpretation that's the most exciting. Let me quote Martin Creed here - "Artists do not make art; they make objects, sculptures, paintings that can be used as art. It's the audience that makes them art."

It was a long day for both of us. We were both absolutely knackered when we left Tate Britain. A few hours of Bacon was simply too much for my tiny little brain. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, two bacon sandwiches provided us with much comfort before we headed home.

A Few Quotes to Start With

Every generation needs a new revolution. -Thomas Jefferson

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy. -Franz Kafka

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you. -Jean-Paul Sartre

It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value. -Stephen Hawking