Begin at the Beginning

Manifestos certainly used to be popular. The blogs of yesteryear? So, not to tread too un-carefully upon already well-trod territory, I'll just open this book at random...and here we've got it: "Second Manifesto of Surrealism."

"Surrealism, although a special part of its function is to examine with a critical eye the notions of reality and unreality, reason and irrationality, reflection and impulse, knowledge and "fatal" ignorance, usefulness and uselessness, is analogous at least in one respect with historical materialism in that it too tends to take as its point of departure the "colossal abortion" of the Hegelian system."

That should do it. I'm sure that anything I might have said, have begun to say, considered saying and then stopped shortly, or wrote and deleted before posting, must somehow be contained in that impressive sentence of André Breton's.

In fact, why write anything further?

It's so clearly all been said. And done. And regretted in the morning.

No reason. Personal practice. Speaking of which, tonight I was surprised on Houston Street (along with five or six hundred other innocent New Yorkers) by a parade of Chabad vans, blinking menorahs strapped to roofs, running red lights across Broadway and blasting music out their windows. Must have been the annual Channukah road race.