Daniel Coffeen

My sister died about 14 months ago.

I’m sitting this morning in a café in San Francisco. I look around and I’m struck that almost everything I see is not only man made but is either for sale or in the service of selling.

The banal is beautiful.

Being happy is awesome. I mean, who doesn’t want to be happy? On the other hand, to be happy is to be dependent on what’s happening.

All thinking is tropic.

What is it we want from television, not to mention art, philosophy, poetry, literature, film, the world in general?

As far as the social and political is concerned, I feel I have done well living as a non-fascist.

No doubt, such an inclination can lead to a certain anti-intellectualism. Which, I have to say, is not necessarily a bad thing per se.

Nietzsche tells us that the greatest question of philosophy is nutrition: What do you eat?  What makes you the healthiest, feeling the best?  What do you most desire in your mouth, in your belly?

I took a modern art history class in college in which I learned the least about images, even if I did learn some good things.

As Derrida would say: there is no raw food, no culture without writing, no pure humanity.

Habit has a way of breaking down, especially as you age.

There’s a swift rise in online universities.

After all, when you’re on your deathbed and look back on your life, you don’t want to have regrets, right?

Cool is restrained, but not repressed, passion.

I am rarely calm as I drive through San Francisco.

Death is not nothing.

I admit it: I have been seduced by the figure of the network and have applied it readily to the internet.