"...a sedimentation of meaning."

I aim to steal more colors from Peter Doig.

I aim to steal more thoughts from Walter Benjamin.
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I have recently begun reading The Cambridge Companion to Walter Benjamin, edited by David S. Ferris. After a few attempts trying to jump into the deep end of critical philosophy, I have decided to start at a reasonably historic point of beginning. By this, I mean that I am not interested, or realistically able, to conduct an entire survey of Western thought by myself, so I am starting at a place that most other (failed) efforts have led me to see as something of a beginning.

Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation is a book I have read twice and understood fully neither of those times. Slavoj Zizek's The Parallax View stumped me about half-way through. (Plus I had to return it to the library) Benjamin it is. And so far, reading this book is akin to someone is explaining to me the things that I already think, but in a much more coherent and comprehensive way. The introduction to the book is more or less a guide to Benjamin's approach to writing and how we as the reader must consider not only his intended meanings but the way in which his 'sober' method of writing not only adds to but is part of the meaning itself. There are plays on the words representing thought (the 'old' fashion of writing) and presenting thought (Benjamin's inteded goal). Writing is broken up into sentances, forcing the reader to pause and reflect, the same way pauses in spoken word can affect a listener.

A favorite quote from the introduction:

"Our knowledge of a subject is the means by which we relate to that which we do not possess."