"The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day."
-David Foster Wallace
"Modernity is the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, which make up one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immutable. This transitory fugitive element, which is constantly changing, must not be despised or neglected."
-Charles Baudelaire
"The deepest problems of modern life flow from the attempt of the individual to maintain the independence and individuality of his existence against the sovereign powers of society, against the weight of the historical heritage and the external culture and technique of life"
-Georg Simmel
(I took these pictures in New York City, though I suppose that's sort of obvious based on the last one's times-squaresiness.)
Notes from a World Traveler:
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Starting with Daedalus’s winged contraption, man has had the obsession to fly. It symbolizes freedom; it excites emotions of awe, wonderment, and infinite possibility. And while modern technology has produced flying machines, there are few ways for man to simulate actual, unassisted flight. Chui ̅ qi ̀ jia (Competitive backwater Laotian 1,1,1-Trichloroethane huffing), one of the rare forms that allow, for a split second, the sportsperson to feel the power of self-generated flight.
-April 25, 1894
JAK
That's an excellent point. But you know, they're destroying too many cattle and oil just to make soap. If we need soap when you can jump into a pool of water, and then when you go to buy your gasoline, my folks always thought they could get pop, but the best thing to get is motor oil, and money. May as well go there and trade in some pop caps and, uh, tires and tractors to get car garages, so they can pull cars away from the wrecks, is what I believed in.
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Andreasen