An affidavit is a legal document of a statement made under oath before an official. Its value depends upon the reputation of the truthfulness of the person who makes the statement as well as the statement’s correspondence to reality.
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Czeslaw Milosz’s conception of time and eternity involves everything having a double existence in both. He considered himself a realist-- a man who tried to “seize hold of fragments of reality.”
Forgiveness is complicated by the fact that he can’t undo an instant that has been stored away.
“Apokatastasis” is the idea that every occurrence is ‘stored somewhere.’ In an interview, Milosz said this concept first appeared in the Epistles and then was developed extensively by Origen. In Greek, it means ‘reinstatement’--the restoration of the state before original sin. For Milosz, it means in poetry that no moment vanishes entirely, and that it can be recreated.
The room turns brighter, then blurs, when I learn of Milosz's admiration for Alexsandr Wat. I understand how I can like Wat. But I cannot extend this understanding to include Milosz.
Thinks his poetry is “a form of incantation,” driven by daimen or “Daimonion”--the voice is key for him. But the voice breaks because it must reflect on memory-on what it can some and what it is fated to lose.
He loved Anna Swir--felt the need to translate her. Alludes to “the wormwood star.”
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"In Bucharest, the psychological damage inflicted on a society subjected to surveillance terror is apparent everywhere when you scratch the surface, even 24 years after the fall of Ceauşescu—in the suspicion older Romanians show toward one another; in the furtiveness and compulsive cheating rampant among shopkeepers and service providers; in the resigned abjection of young people who can imagine no future options besides A.) colorless, lifelong conformity in a degrading job or B.) membership in a neo-Nazi gang; in the atmosphere of demoralized powerlessness that suffuses daily life in Bucharest as perceptibly as melancholia pervades Istanbul. No problem too small to be insoluble, no conflict unthreatening enough to resolve without trauma. And in the countryside, people say, it’s worse."
[from "Romanian Notes", previously by Gary Indiana]
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A tweet is not an affidavit. But an affidavit might include a tweet.
Legal process depends on the value of words and the ability to discern an agreed-upon meaning. No one can be legally guilty of murder until murder is defined.
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“Well that was in a newspaper. No, no, I like Ted Cruz, he’s a friend of mine. But that was in the newspaper. I wasn’t, I didn’t say that. I was referring to a newspaper. A Ted Cruz article referred to a newspaper story with, had a picture of Ted Cruz, his father, and Lee Harvey Oswald, having breakfast.”
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"A little piece of sky, barely as big as my palm, which is also obstructed by razor wire."
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“When we keep these men’s secrets, we allow their predatory behavior to thrive.”
When we don't keep their secrets, we are labelled good mothers. Stoics. Understanding forgivers since no man is perfect.
The problem with forgiveness is how much it depends on contrition.
Did you say you're sorry?
Did you mean it.
"I go by what's in his heart."
