Too much has been left to unsafe conjecture and frequently that which might have developed into proof has become arrested on the border of suspicion.
-Clarkson Co Ltd. v. Zhelka, Ontario, 1967

Nice. I wonder if there's a course one can take to learn how to write like a judge?

I want to be creative so I bought cheap paint and small canvasses and I paint. But I can’t really draw, so I just paint streaks and swirls of different colours. It’s meant to be relaxing, but it’s actually frustrating, because it doesn’t look good. I’m a perfectionist and I want to make art. It seems silly to spend money on supplies to create something ugly. At least with writing you’ve only wasted time.

I was reluctant to buy the supplies in the first place because I knew I would get upset. At least I understand the problems I make for myself. That’s a start.

If I could turn all that off, I would enjoy just the motion of painting. I like how thick the paint is at first, how it thins out with brushing, then ends up in a nice pattern of back and forth brush strokes with white canvas showing through. It’s pleasing to see the white space of the canvas become red, then blue, then shades of purple. Sort of like a bruise. Maybe that’s what I should do: try to paint a bruise.

The most interesting thing said in class this week was, "A trust is a trust is a trust, as Gertrude Stein might have said if she'd thought about it." My ears perk up at any mention of Stein, especially in settings that are mainstream, not poetic, where people are not in the know, whatever the know is that I think I know.

But it is interesting -- when Stein wrote, A rose is a rose is a rose, it was to disassociate the word rose from the referent rose and make a familiar word uncomfortably unfamiliar for its materiality. A trust is a trust is a trust, however, has nothing to do with the word trust and everything to do with the concept of trusts, which are fundamentally the same whether they are personal or business-related, investment vehicles or tax avoidance strategies.

Stein is one of those writers whose profound statements have become very well-known, even though the significance of her insights have not. Too bad people don't randomly quote Tender Buttons. I'd love to hear everyone saying, Single fish single fish single fish eggplant single fish sight. It's pretty catchy once you get it in your head.

Cows don’t have a quivering ______ .
I had a philosophy of law class yesterday that was so good I forgot to take notes. The only thing I remember is the above phrase, but I forget the end. It came in the middle of something about ontology and the dichotomy of “just being” and constant change and the problems human beings create for themselves by being aware of the quivering something of everything changing and how logos is the root of those problems because it makes us separate ourselves from the fact of our being. But cows don’t have that problem. It is so fantastically awesome to be in a class (in law school, remember) where you can answer the prof’s question of why you’re in the class with, “One thing that I’m interested in is language and how law regulates every aspect of our lives through language but no one ever looks at the language to realize that it’s flawed and impossible” and the prof is like, “Yes! That’s exactly it. Law has always felt to me like a translation.” Then he went off on something else and he lost me a bit after that, but still…. Awesome.