online: 10 october 2002
9 october 2002 a changed world
12:12 ...the world is changing all the time and as part of it so am i for i/world is everyone (if we admit or seek slight changes in the meaning* of words as i or anyone speaks or writes)...
so let us recognise that there is change in everything, and that there is stability also, and read and write accordingly
what changes are occurring now?
all things change - it would be death if they didn't
ah! ...so death is when changes stop!
that seems to simplify everything and to dispel fear
to me this is a new thought, a changed world (and a living language)**
*by this i mean that the meaning of each word changes slightly (and sometimes greatly) in the context of a new utterance or writing. for instance 'i/world' (an improvisation that occurred to me as I wrote it) changes slightly the previous meaning of both 'i' (or 'I') and 'world' ... and yet each utterance or writing embodies and is the continuance, the stability, of language and culture ... and the wonder is that each utterance or writing is composed of words that are both stabilised and changed by the presence of each other!
**I'm reminded of Gertrude Stein's lecture 'Composition as explanation' and in particular of what she says and says in slightly changing ways within it:
The only thing that is different from one time to another is what is seen and what is seen depends upon how everybody is doing everything.
Gertrude Stein, writings and lectures 1911-1945, edited by Patricia Meyerowitz, introduction by Elizabeth Sprigge, Peter Owen, London 1967 (later published by Penguin Books as Look at me now and here I am.)
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© 2002 john chris jones
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