Bits and Pieces of This and That

by a few different writers

I am going to write down some bits and pieces of wonderful things that I've been reading lately. I'm not going to give them any introduction or context, so that years from now you might stumble across them in a book you're reading and find them strangely familiar, and then drive yourself nearly crazy trying to figure out where you've read them before. Eventually you may think of this paragraph and recognize the source of this eerie deja vu, and in the end you will feel more closely bound to the book you are reading, knowing that it has been read before, by someone, a stranger, a friend, the childhood companion of a spouse, whoever, but someone who thought enough of it to tell you about it.

"When you think of me, Saniette," I said, "think of two men - myself and the chauffeur within me. This chauffeur is very large and dressed in ugly ready-made clothing. His shoes, soiled from walking about the streets of a great city, are covered with animal ordure and chewing gum. His hands are covered with coarse woollen gloves. On his head is a derby hat.
"The name of this chauffeur is The Desire to Procreate."

"I saw our house moving in the fluid of time, and the shore upon which the arcing waves broke was Great-Grandmother's teeth. That's really weird."

"Marvelous it was that although my tooth was not pulled out, I was just as gratified as if it were - actually, even more so. From the Taoist viewpoint of Laozi and Zhuangzi, pulling was not pulling, not pulling was pulling. From the Buddhist viewpoint, the tooth was the sorrow, the great sorrow was suffering, suffering was boundless; but turn back your steps, and salvation was at hand. From the Freudian viewpoint, pulling out the tooth was release. From the Keynesian viewpoint, pulling out the tooth was a process of value accumulation. From the Sartrean viewpoint, the aching tooth was the externalization of the essence. From the viewpoint of systems, pulling the tooth was system engineering. From the Nietzschean viewpoint, a toothache was the proof of degradation and misfortune, was the pain of you not feeling my pain, the proof of the isolation of misunderstood greatness, proof that the culture of teeth was more unbearable than the aching tooth..."
(Okay, I have to give this one away, because it makes it even better - it's by Wang Meng, deposed Chinese Minister of Culture.)

"I often think that the purest type of the artist is the humorist who laughs alone at his own jests."