"MY MILITARY": PAINT A VULGAR PICTURE

Vanity makes ugly, ought therefore really to kill, instead however it merely injures itself, becoming “injured vanity.” 

   - Franz Kafka, The Blue Octavo Notebooks ("The Third Notebook")

“But as I’ve already said,” Obama noted, “I have had my military and our team look at a wide range of options.”

   - President Barack Obama, August 30, 2013

The Smiths: Paint A Vulgar Picture (Link)

WALL

I am in the habit of relying on my coachman in everything.  When we came past a high white wall, slowly bulging at the sides and at the top, and ceased to drive ahead, driving along the wall, touching it, the coachman finally said:  "It is a forehead."

Franz Kafka, The Blue Octavo Notebooks, The Eighth Notebook, Cambridge, Exact Change, 1991.

WONDERING

    The history of the world, as it is written and handed down by word of mouth, often fails us completely; but man’s intuitive capacity, though it often misleads, does lead, does not ever abandon one.  And so, for instance, the tradition of the seven wonders of the world has always associated with it the rumor that there was another, an eighth wonder of the world, and concerning the eighth wonder there were various, perhaps contradictory, statements made, the vagueness of which was explained by the obscurity of ancient times.

Franz Kafka:  Second Notebook, The Blue Octavo Notebooks, Cambridge, Exact Change, 1990.

Black Grape -- Get Higher (Link)

Neil Young -- Wonderin' (Link) 

Visuals:  Richard Long, Saharaline (top), Dusty Boots In The Sahara (bottom), 1988.

ROPE

1.  The true way is along a rope that is not spanned high in the air, but only just above the ground.  It seems intended more to cause stumbling than to be walked along.

Franz Kafka, Reflections, The Blue Octavo Notebooks



Note:  Possibly, possibly a little obvious, but ain't it the truth.  That is to say, that's the story of my life, that's the difference between wrong and right. 

Jeff Beck Group -- Shapes of Things (Link)