DISCOVERY

SLOUGH

Slough --> Swamp. Inlet on a river. A place of deep mud or mire. Backwater. A state of moral degradation or spiritual dejection.

OLD TIMES

SOMETHING FROM 11 YEARS AGO

GOD

FROM MAY

"We define religion as the assumption that life has meaning. Religion, or lack of it, is shown not in some intellectual or verbal formulations but in one's total orientation to life. Religion is whatever the individual takes to be his ultimate concern. One's religious attitude is to be found at that point where he has a conviction that there are values in human existence worth living and dying for.

[several passages later, May is quoting from Erich Fromm] '...There is much less difference between a mystic's faith in god (by which he means the indigenous convictions of the religious person rather than other-worldly creeds) and an atheist's rational faith in mankind than between the former and that of a calvinist whose faith in god is rooted in the conviction of his own powerlessness and in his fear of god's power.'"

- Rollo May, Man's Search For Himself

1920'S RUDENESS

In slightly higher quality:
- here
- and here

MORE SIMIC

"Seeing is determined not by the eye but by the clarity of my consciousness. Most of the time the eyes see nothing."

- Charles Simic, The Unemployed Fortune-Teller

THE NEW PORNOGRAPHY

"In the 19th century, everybody knew about death. In the 20th century, nobody knows about death. People die in hospitals now. In the 19th century, nobody knew about sex. In the 20th century, everybody knows about sex. Death has become the new pornography. We don't talk about it."

- Helen Sclair, from Studs Terkel's Will The Circle Be Unbroken?

A PERFECT THING