20 mar 2013

antinomianism: from the Greek ἀντί, "against" + νόμος, "law", a belief [originating in Christian theology] that faith alone, not obedience to [religious] law, is necessary for salvation

Paul Bowles [pic courtesy of Literary Kicks]

I hope you'll read (better yet, reread) one of my favorite stories of all time: 

PaulBowles’s “A Distant Episode”

How eerily pertinent to my recently departed life.

William James [pic courtesy of William James Graduate School]

from William James’s The Principles of Psychology, 1890:

No more fiendish punishment could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed by all the members thereof. If no one turned around when we entered, answered when we spoke, or minded what we did, but if every person we met “cut us dead,” and acted as if we were non-existent things, a kind of rage and impotent despair would before long well up in us, from which the cruellest bodily torture would be a relief.

Susan Howe [pic by Charles Bernstein]

Susan Howe:

PaulValéry once said, “The mollusk does not know its shell until it lives it,” so I curl up inside and work and wait. In my shell are books from all worlds.