I am a bad blogger.

I never actually see any movies or books, and I mostly visit the same web sites over and over. I wish I could go see this video, Disobbedienti, at Hallwalls in Buffalo. Or this book, about the workerist movemest in Italy, Storming Heaven.

I wish I could read this book, Time for Revolution, which I actually own. I was in the hospital when it came, being observed and tested for (further) signs of appendicitis. Kind of a non-story, as I don't have it, didn't have it. The other woman in the next bed was old and wailing all the time, "Nurse? nurse? Oh God. Oh God. What did I do to deserve this? Nurse? nurse? nurse?" At first I would page the nurse every time she started wailing. Soon I grew to hate her; I hissed at her, "use the call button!" Another old woman, across the hall, kept saying "hello? [twenty-second pause] hello? [pause, and repeat]." She pronounced it "he-lou" or "he-low," (like ow!)

After the hospital I stayed one night in the university infirmary. Now there's an institution! Quaint, collegiate, paternalist (or maternalist, really), beds in rows. It was like the Madeleine books. (which reminds me of the other madeleine, I tried to read Proust in the hospital, only got through the overture. Not really a conducive place for it, nurse hello nurse hello.)

Institutions I would like to be confined in:

Rebibbia prison, on the Negri plan: it's terrible to make light of. Italy brutally crushed its radical movement, that's no joke. But still. Think of it: in the daytime, you amble through the streets of Rome; at nightfall, you come back to the prison, read your Spinoza, have a little of the house wine with Toni (Negri). It's not good wine--it's only prison--but still. (this is mostly a bad joke; he served a lot of time before his conditions changed to house arrest.)

La Borde clinic, founded by Jean Oury as part of the anti-psychiatry movement. It's democratic, not very sharp borders between staff and patients, it's in the Loire valley. In the summer they put on a play. I saw the documentary, of their production of Gobrowicz.

The hospital though, no fun at all. No wine, no Toni, no Gombrowicz.

The Negri book was here when I got back from the hospital, but I haven't gotten to it. I don't have the strength for it, Nietzsche would say. Or he would say, I was too strong to read that book, I had to wait until weakness, sickness...

The books I really ought to have are always other books. Like this, Invoking Humanity, or this, A Grammar of the Multitude. Maybe I'm mistaken about the invoking humanity book, it appealed because it has this epigraph from Carl Schmitt, "Whoever invokes humanity wants to cheat."