"Distinctions, we might say, arise out of a great central moltenness, where all is merged. They have been thrown from a liquid center to the surface, where they have congealed. Let one of these crusted distinctions return to its source, and in this alchemic center it may be remade, again becoming molten liquid, and may again be thrown forth as a new crust, a different distinction" (in Bizzell and Herzberg 1300).
Bizzell (Patricia) and Herzberg (Bruce) are the editors of my giant, fat, rhetorical theory textbook, The Rhetorical Tradition. how they ever corralled all 1673 pages of that thing into a only-slightly-unwieldy and mostly quite readable codex is a mystery our whole class has been puzzling over.
this whole semester I've been fascinated by this idea that everything is in flux. we cannot rightly talk only of things, items, or substances. we must, if we ever want to understand things really, talk about processes. situations. events-in-progress. it's difficult. but I love it, for some reason. nothing ends, or begins, it just changes...
me included.
and now I'm off to volunteer in the letterpress lab for a little bit. and then: more grading. and then: research. and then: perhaps a nap...
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