the death bomb

Music: Joni Mitchell: Blue Examining Patocka's Heretical Essays, in The Gift of Death Derrida comments that "it is from the site of death as the place of my irreplaceability, that is, of my singularity, that I feel called to responsibility." He continues, however, that in forming responsibility there is necessarily a substitution, a slight of another (an-Other-singularity) in pursuit of a general responsibility or—perhaps worse, I am uncertain—an absolute responsibility (Abraham's sacrifice; the sublimity of not simply succumbing to the law, but becoming the law). It would seem as witnesses to catastrophe we have much trouble finding the middle way, the centered-responsibility (which is not centered at all, ironically; it wavers between the singular and the collective) or something like it, a comfort with being able to help sometimes but often never.

The state tends toward sublimity: this morning there was another ritual moment of silence, and bells were rung, and stately faces stared in false memory. The 2001 "Tribute of Light" will return to the night sky and fade at dusk on Monday.

Irresponsibility is modeled so well by meting death; it is indeed a sad day.