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Katexic Clippings (ARCHIVE)

from Leaves of Grass (Walt Whitman)

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body…

—Walt Whitman
—found in the Preface to Leaves of Grass (1855 edition)

cathexis

Cathexis

cathexis · /kuh-THEK-sis/ · /kəˈθɛksɪs/. noun. The concentration or charge of energy invested into an idea, person or object. From Greek kathexis (retention, holding), from katechein (to hold fast, occupy), from echein (to have, to hold), from PIE root segh- (to hold). First recorded by Sigmund Freud. See also: hypercathexis, an excessive concentration of mental energy.

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Links: May 31, 2020

  1. For the LOLs → BIRD NESTING STYLES: A CRITICAL REVIEW ※ A new MasterClass: Your Dad Teaches Loading the Dishwasher ※ ► Classic Warner Bros. Bloopers
  2. This Word Does Not Exist uses text generation algorithms to “make up words, definitions and examples from scratch.” (Thanks Reader S.)
  3. The Kentucky Miner Who Scammed Americans by Claiming He Was Hitler and Plotting a ‘Revolt’ With ‘Spaceships’
  4. Hong Kong Shop Offers ‘Tear Gas’ Flavored Ice Cream in Support of Pro-Democracy Movement
  5. The Hellbox was where metal sorts (pieces of type) were tossed after printing. Sorting the used type out was a job for apprentices known as printer’s devils, a position once held by Walt Whitman, Ambrose Bierce, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Mark Twain. ¶ In 1990, renowned print and typography firm Linotype merged with another company, becoming Linotype-Hell, and later made a Photoshop like product with the wonderful name Linotype-Hell DaVinci. ※ See (but please don’t use) the typographically horrifying Hellvetica font. ※ Watch ► a clip from the “Printer’s Devil” episode of The Twilight Zone. (Thanks for the spark, Reader B.)
  6. Awwww, Penguins Get Private Tour of Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. ※ Meanwhile, somewhere in California, there arose a pop-up Emergency Art Museum.
  7. ‘Iso’, ‘boomer remover’ and ‘quarantini’: how coronavirus is changing our language
  8. The Shakespeare and Company Project lets you browse the records (what they borrowed, where they lived, and sometimes scans of the original cards) of the many famous (and not so famous) authors and philosophers who used the renowned bookstore‘s lending library from 1919-1962. As the center of bohemian literary culture, this means notables including James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein…but literally thousands of more lesser-known (and forgotten) names.
  9. Eye candy → Parker Thornton’s Photography ※ Polly Verity’s sensual faces curved and folded from a single sheet of paper ※ Andoni Bastarikka’s sand sculptures that near the uncanny valley ※ a parliament of shells
  10. Today in 1819, poet, essayist and journalist Walt Whitman is born in Huntington, New York. ¶ Whitman’s wild free verse was the first to clearly establish an American poetry, breaking from its English roots. Deeply influenced by the strange, contradictory world of sexuality in the Victorian influenced world of antebellum America—and some brutal experiences as a hospital volunteer during the Civil War—Whitman’s poetry was expansive, populist, sensual, and simultaneously glorified individualism and the people. It’s no surprise that Whitman’s influence can be seen on all kinds of writers, including William Carlos Williams, Langston Hughes, John Berryman, and the entire Beat movement. It’s not a stretch to argue that without Whitman to play against, we wouldn’t have poets like Wallace Stevens or T. S. Eliot. ¶ Everything you could want to know about Walt Whitman can be found in The Walt Whitman Archive ※ Read (and listen to) Leaves of Grass. ※ ► Watch Brooklynites reading “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” ※ The Whitman, Alabama project has people from across that state telling stories of their lives…and reading Whitman. ※ Whitman wrote two famous poems when President Lincoln died: hear ► James Earl Jones reads “When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d”; read “O Captain! My Captain!. ※ Or, wait, Should Walt Whitman Be #Cancelled?
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