Destiny never consists in step-by-step deterministic relations between presents which succeed one another according to the order of a represented time. Rather, it implies between successive presents non-localisable connections, actions at a distance, systems of replay, resonance and echoes, objective chances, signs, signals, and roles which transcend spatial locations and temporal successions. — Gilles Deleuze, […]
Banal places are always the best places/spaces in which to write.
– Marcus D. Niski
Jorge Luis Borges — The Vale of Soul-Making
Beyond my anxiety, beyond this writing, the universe waits, inexhaustible, inviting.
― Jorge Luis Borges, A Personal Anthology. (Grove Press, January 14, 1994) Originally published 1961.
Space – what is it?
Space – where is it?
Space – How do we understand it?
– Marcus D. Niski
What is important, it seems to me, is not so much to defend a culture whose existence has never kept a man from going hungry, as to extract, from what is called culture, ideas whose compelling force is identical to that of hunger.
– Antonin Artaud
[As quoted in Paul Auster’s The Art of Hunger, Sun & Moon Press, Los Angeles, 1992]
Describe your street. Describe another street. Compare.
– Georges Perec ‘Approaches to What?’ in Species of Space and Other Pieces
In the meantime we agreed to forget our cares for the night. We took a little money from our savings and walked to Forty-second Street. We stopped at a photo booth in Playland to take our pictures, a strip shot of four shots for a quarter. We go a hot dog and papaya drink at Benedict’s, then merged with the action. Boys on shore leave, prostitutes, runaways, abused tourists, and assorted victims of alien abduction. It was an urban boardwalk with Kino parlors, souvenir stands, Cuban diners, strip clubs, and late-night pawnshops. For fifty cents, one could slip inside a theatre draped in stained velvet and watch foreign films paired with soft porn.
– ‘Patti Smith’s “Forty Second Street Urban Boardwalk” in: Patti Smith, Just Kids, Bloomsbury, London, 2010, P 107.
Quotations from My Writer’s Notebooks
By Marcus D. Niski
Over a long period of time now, I’ve collected a huge range of quotations and aphorisms from my reading and research that I’ve written down by hand in my notebooks, as well as engaging in the almost daily practice of writing my own observations and aphorisms – I suspect Paul Valery would be proud of my efforts indeed!
While I’ve made a sustained personal effort, Valery was undoubtedly one of the most prolific notebook writers of all time.
For those readers who are unfamiliar with his work, Valery was a master of observation and notetaking as the 29 published volumes of his Cahiers (notebooks) attest to:
“Every morning he would get up at around five o’clock and write meditations, notes, and speculations in small volumes that he intended for no one but himself. There were more than 250 of these notebooks at the end of his life, and they are not only now available in published form, but are, ironically, among the most important and most read—most public—of his writings…” – Paul Valéry 1871–1945
Here are some of my favorite quotations and aphorisms on place, space, and writing from my collection of writers notebooks – particularly those around the themes of seeing, noticing and observing – the stuff of all great observational and literary writing whether about cities or otherwise …
Marcus D. Niski, May 2017
Naked Cities Journal 