The Burning Block Issue 2

By Shane Eide

In this second issue, such topics as currency and general politics are explored, along with the unconscious, driving forces of culture in a series called 'Invisible Totems of the Modern World.' Readers are also invited to explore what lies behind the surface of our common preconceptions through the latest in a series of aphorisms.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shane Eide
• Release date: Dec 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370660414

Shane Eide

Shane Eide is a part-time hermit, part-time flaneur, which means that he is either spending time on literary pursuits or taking walks and thinking about literary pursuits​. He lives in a little room walled with books and sleeps near a big desk, on which he doesn't write since all the quiet is too distracting. He usually goes someplace noisy in order to write as much about fiction as he writes fiction. He's been writing fiction since he was about 11, in which time he's written several novels that he never intends to publish and which no one will ever see, and several others that he wants to publish that he's read out loud to his gold fish. He's been writing what he supposes would be called non-fiction ever since he wrote "Shane was here," in easily erasable pencil on a desk in junior high. You can read his essays and occasional fiction at his blog, www.emergenthermit.com

Book preview

THE BURNING BLOCK

Philosophy, Politics, Literature

Issue 2

January 1, 2017

EDITOR

SHANE EIDE

©Copyright, The Burning Block Issue 2

Edition 1 Published by Shane Eide, January 1, 2017

Edited by Shane Eide and Fred Velvet

Cover design by Shane Eide

Cover image by Fred Velvet

Portland Oregon

The contents of this issue may not be republished elsewhere or redistributed by anyone but the editor, with the exception of brief excerpts for the sake of review or the endorsement or critique of ideas herein.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

A Letter from the Editor

Aphorisms

A Threat to Our Democracy

General Politics

Invisible Totems of the Modern World

The Body as Currency

Every Cliché Uttered

A LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Shane Eide

An election cycle can be a peculiar time to launch a magazine, but I would be tempted to consider the most recent election cycle the most peculiar time, that is, if it weren’t for the fact that such consideration would be doing a grave disservice to posterity’s registry of this time precisely as a piece of history that they might just as soon will to extinction if it means the chance for them to exalt far more mundane features of life to the height of something artful and clever. No one desires to be caught being unshrewd concerning the time in which one lives. The most immediate way to avoid doing the work of some future historian—of whom it will not be required to fake by way of style his distance from the events of which he writes—is to remain wholly in the strangeness of this time; risky yet completely unavoidable though this complete lack of distance from events might be. If the historian’s job is to neutralize strangeness, the job of one writing about current events is surely to make current events appear stranger than they are. Opinions need some other form of mobilization beyond mere gossip. In the first issue, I stated that this magazine would not pander to any political party nor endorse any idea on account of its proximity to this or that wing or privilege. However, in today’s climate, one has one’s work ahead of him if he wishes a different assumption to come across; that a friend is not always made at the expense of having made another an enemy. I would not dream of alienating another’s endorsement of something through my own incongruous