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anne, i'm so sorry this comes so late! after january and the beginning of my spring term, i simply disappeared from this discussion into finishing my thesis. paul had said, though, that the wonder of the internet is keeping conversations open indefinitely, and i certainly appreciate that sentiment - so, by way of response (or apology): i'm glad we don't sound antagonistic! the inevitability of rather harsh and often blind criticism in transatlantic 'conversations' (often effectively shouting-matches) is sad and completely unmotivating (for example, what's expressed in the instruction 'close your deleuze; open your darwin' - uninspiring, given both a) deleuze's principled aversion to such polemical commandments; and b) his hope that readers will, while keeping their deleuze open of course, open their darwin too - he hugely appreciated darwin's work, and this appreciation continues in the work of contemporary 'deleuzeians' like massumi and delanda).

but you've asked me whether i insist on keeping all stories open, given that we can never know what might become generative; (after months during which i'm sure my opinion has changed,) that's not what i'd suggest. in one of his poems, heidegger writes (in 'poetry language thought')(and forgive my approximation, i don't have the book beside me),

we never come to thoughts,
thoughts come to us.

i suppose, first, i'm weary of our actively pruning; that it might really and effectively discard an idea, telling us 'this thought is too wrong and of no use. we will no longer let it come to us.' we are in no place to so limit the potentials of thought, and i don't think we should want to: 'God is dead and wrong and of no use - let us discard' what, nearly 2000 years of fascinating theistic philosophy? as if meister eckhart or saint paul couldn't push contemporary philosophers to new places! but whatever the case - and, in this context, i take this to be heidegger's point - it is simply impossible for us to actively and completely discard some idea: thoughts come to us, whether from some wild avant garde or the quiet ashes of the pile of dead weeds we've just burned.

~davey