Randt: “Granted it could always be a scam. Ain’t no people in the world who ain up for some kinda scam. Believe you me. But that don’t entail that there wasn some sorta truth to the proposition. That don’t entail that there wasn somethin real that they were pickin up. Miniscule alterations that you never noticed yerself, but were takin place none the less. “

Lewis proclaims, “The Vorticist does not suck up to Life. He lets Life know its place in a Vorticist Universe! He uses life for his brothel so that he can keep himself pure for non-life, that is Art.”

“Art, then becomes the contrasting force to Life.”

“Take Joe, for instance. Totally stuck in the eighties. He puts everyone into categories and gets so caught up in them that he totally forgets about people, like what real people are like. He's that whole Ringwald movie series all rolled into one. And the truth is, people just aren't like that anymore. Maybe its the drug movement, maybe it’s post-modern ecclecticism. Call it what you will, but the distinctions between different types of people have broken down.”

First I’m gonna try some classic Goffman (1961) on dis’ucker: “Staff members’ energy waxes and wanes. These involvement cycles occur when a staff member becomes close to some inmates, retreats, then builds warm relationships again.”

“No, I don get it.”

“Like, there are times when I really like the patients and I really want to work with them and help them. And then there are times when I get completely fed up with all of their crap. Don’t you get that?”

“...”

“When they are discouraged or despondent, they work in a listless, perfunctory, and routine way. Some make an effort to disguise their discouragement, but others do not.”

Randt is jus lookin at me kinda sideways, like he’s supposin dat dis a trick question or somethin, “I jus don’t think it’s the best time to be talkin bout that sorta thing, y’know, like when we’re actually surrounded by ‘the patients’. Y’know, like, we’re in the FIELD right now, man.”

Yeah, I guess he’s probly right bout that one. Somehow dat jus didn’t occur to me. I dunno why. Maybe i’s cuz I turned Maro off, or somethin. Thing is dat I don really get any other chance to talk to Randt. I only see him in de FIELD an sometimes at d’occasional Board Meetin. What am I s’posed to do, get’im to make an appointment?

“Some o’de patients ask to switch counselors when dey have conflicts wid’individual to whom dey bin assigned.”

“What is this about, man? You know I don’t get any patients assigned to me.”

Randt jus goes back to his usual shit, now.

“Take Joe, for instance. Totally stuck in the eighties. He puts everyone into categories and gets so caught up in them that he totally forgets about people, like what real people are like. He's that whole Ringwald movie series all rolled into one. And the truth is, people just aren't like that anymore. Maybe its the drug movement, maybe it’s post-modern ecclecticism. Call it what you will, but the distinctions between different types of people have broken down.”

Ok, so maybe I’ll try some Leibniz, den, “I know what you sayin, Nominal Definition: consists of de numeration o’the marks o’requisites which are sufficient to distinguish a thing from all others.”

I got de feelin he ain gonna like dat one too much.

“You can jus fuck right off. You don even kno’what you talkin bout. See ya later, sucker.”

Guess I’m on my own, now. De patients’till goin on.

“Even Time dissolves in the presence of Art. Life is the Past and the Future, the Present is Art.”

Man, where’d’ey boil up dis bile o’shit from? I’m gonna reply wid some real quality, “It is its time because it puts in the present, just as each acting subject is his time, that is, a presence that puts in the present whatever is related to it.”

Haa ha. Take that. Got that one from good old Henry Corbin.

Lewis insists, “There is no Present - there is a Past and Future, and there is Art.”

Dat is’uch bullshit. Might as well be talkin to Randt. I’ll try some more Corbin, but I don’t’hink i’s gonna get me anywhere. “It is likewise to reduce real time to abstract physical time, to the essentially quantitative time which is that of the objectivity of mundane calendars from which the signs that gave a sacred qualification to every present have disappeared.”

“For the sake of Art artists must reject society; for, in society, men ‘overlap’ and ‘intersect’, and promiscuity is normal.”

“But promiscuity is normal.”

“Artists must undergo a course of egotistic hardening before they can produce hard outside art.”

Dis d’art dat Lewis admires most. I oughtta be referrin dis guy to JoseF.

“Woodcuts are disciplined, blunt, thick and brutal.”

Or maybe I could get’im to meet up wid a student somehow. Maybe I should just enroll’im in one o’JoseF’s classes.