Rome, Naples, Sicily, Matera.

"China?" the interviewer asked, presumably perplexed because China is not known for holding free elections. Mr. Assad was silent. The reporter then asked if Mr. Assad had any "self-criticisms." He replied: "It's illogical to carry out self-criticism before the events have been completed. If you go to watch a film you don't criticize it until it ends." (The New York Times, May 19, 2013, p.10).

If it's all good, as I heard someone say yesterday at the top of his lungs to a crowd of young people who were disenchanted by a long wait at a restaurant they sought entrance to, the question is, what is it?

Lately, I see my shadow is cast as much or more by my voice than my body. That what I say about myself and others has consequences far beyond what I might possibly imagine, and that Sound is a shadow with sails.

Never trust anyone incapable of introspection, including yourself.

Reading a bio of John Clare, it's heartening to discover that he'd written about flowers, trees, streams, and birds while out among them. He'd sit in a field with a pen and little pieces of paper and write prose about what he was seeing, making what he saw sound the way it looked.

I believe that if you look at a bird long enough you'll eventually hear a poem.

The problem with art now is that it sees only from the perspective of the one seeing it; so there's something for everyone, which is not good for art.

Art made this way is limited to only one perspective, and so one painting looks like another painting and art becomes such a common vision that almost everyone seems to be making it; which justifies the notion that anything made can be called art.

The job of a democratic system is to keep watch over its own totalitarian impulse, and the instinct of the totalitarian impulse is to mimic the democratic system to the satisfaction of its practitoners while still remaining in power.

Holes were being dug by a madman, silently.

The landscape wasn't a place you could live in for longer than two hours, and to die there was unthinkable.

In the last scene the actors walked through the graveyard looking for their names on the stones.

After that, the sun came out which our eyes rejected.

We need to take what we need from the past, then use the internet accordingly.

It takes its time, never lifts its voice to convince you of its virtues.

One day you're just standing there as you've always stood, waiting to be taken along to what will happen next. You're a little impatient to get there, as impatient as you'll be once you arrive.

And while you wait, waiting comes out of nowhere with its blessing to say to you that you're right where you need to be.

Cars go by, men and women talk, life goes on. You have accepted silence as fate.

Each leaf acted like it was free to live its own life.

It happened so quickly I wondered if it had happened at all.

There may in fact be no ideal other than the ancient philosophical notion of the ideal.

Without the ideal it is easier to imagine living in a world of imperfection, and to actually live there without feeling the need to upgrade it to the level of the ideal.

Objects would no longer have to the imbued with the idea that some other thing stood within them--the form behind the form--and could just be what they are. 

It's remarkable how we can see each other but can't see ourselves.

One idea would be to create a Department of Introspection, or to create a new post and confer upon it status equal to the Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense.

How introspective though could a corporation be? For the notion of introspection to work for the social good, introspection must be required, thought of as a sort of tax or other real obligation, and practiced by the Individual and the Collective.

It's certainly time to initiate The Department of Common Sense, an idea I had some years ago and officially proposed to Bill Clinton when he was President.

Yannis Ritsos, the late Greek Poet, thought of poetry as a "revenge on reality."

It's our job now not to escape reality but to be rooted in it.

Why don't the birds say anything? The fish? We all share this planet. Can't they speak up?

CO2 is a crayon a child is holding. It colors the tops of the hills across the bay as the sun goes down.

As opposed to good design, which has something that makes you want to look at it and, in a consumer culture, something that makes you want to use whatever it is you're looking at.

Design is having power over something.

It's the totalitarian instinct exercized over an object (something) to make an object either useful or beautiful or both.

I explained this to a young designer who had created the packaging for a new line of premium Japanese sake. Her design was so striking I wanted to eat it. However, it was extremely difficult to get the bottle she'd designed out of the box she'd designed. I told her that her design, no matter how beautiful, was making it hard on the consumer and that there might be consequences. English was her second language, but she seemed to understand.

Good design is a road and a road is a good design. The Roman's were good roadbuilders and that capability went a long way toward establishing an empire. "Transportation is civilization," said Rudyard Kipling.

I'm going to stop thinking so much about the present and start thinking more about the past, which, if thought through, might guide me more accurately to the future.