In a message dated 3/25/09 4:08:51 PM, [email protected] writes:
> I intended my remark, "not playing by the rules," as a harmless tweak, > And I probably should have taken it as that. You've used that exact phrase before, and, though I confess I frowned, I shrugged it off. (I want to believe my blunders are the result of my stupid befuddlement, and "not playing by the rules" suggests a conscious cunning I feel slow to plead guilt of.) I take my boiling reaction this time to be further evidence of the total subjectivity of "meaning"! My exclamation mark makes that remark sound facetious, but there's something to it. I've said I can go along with the use of the word 'meaning' if we confine it to a subjective status along these lines: The "meaning for you" is the notion occasioned in you by encountering the object (a word, painting, song, etc). And that notion is a function of your accumulated associations plus your receiving apparatus. Well, the receiving apparatus can be affected by degree of intelligence, sensibility, prejudice -- and by mood. In general I'm gruntish -- not moody. But this past week or two has been an unsettling one because I've discovered that someone in what I'll call "business" whom I trusted so implicitly I never checked up on him, has been "taking advantage" for several years. It doesn't imperil my financial status, but the notion is so repelling, and also revelatory of such a stupid naivete on my part, that no doubt I've been grumpy. Absent that, I probably wouldn't have jumped on Boris's line in the first place. I've been off the forum for the past month or so, and my plan was to get through the distracting other work so I could rejoin the forum with a continuation of my thoughts about your (Michael's) definition of art of several week's ago. Very faulty, that -- oh my, yes. But when I take it up again I shall do it with angelic forebearance. Yes -- that's what I shall do, yes. I hope. ************** Feeling the pinch at the grocery store? Make meals for Under $10. (http://food.aol.com/frugal-feasts?ncid=emlcntusfood00000002)
