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content and expression
November 2007 
quarters
jaymichael
I love quarters. Quarters are cute and always useful. They cannot be shredded and are terrifically difficult to fragment. I tend to stack quarters one-on-top-of-the-other, but I know they're purpose is to be four together as one.
What am I talking about?
I am referring to more than just currency for clean laundry. I am talking about how quarters are used for abstracting things. Things, being not subjects but rather objects, are residual artifacts from the formless. Quarters have form and substance. As such, they are formed matters, and I wouldn't have them any other way.
We each have quarters to ourselves. Other than simple pocket change, I am a quarter; we are a quarter; it is a quarter; its perspective is not whole, it’s quartered. Those are pronoun quarters whereas these metallic discs I feed the washing machine are quarter dollars. The distinction I am making here is semantic. Nevertheless, it is a very real distinction between content and expression. The expression ‘I am a quarter’ indicates my contents. However, without a correlating expression, it is meaningless. For instance, if I say “I am a quarter. Quarters are cute,” then I am saying I am cute. That is meaningful because I am something and those things are something else. It is the relative nature of the two statements which gives meaning to what I have to say.
Quarters are constituted by one with capital. The type of quarter and its value are entangled in the distinction made by the one and then another. This is not tangled laundry; this is what is called a double articulation. First, content is formulated in a quarter and substantiated as a quarter, and secondly, this is balanced by corresponding quarters of expression—formulating and substantiating the other half to make a whole.
Access: Public
And what about drunken games, you can’t play those with paper currency .
and why quarters, can you play dimes?
andc what about this bias of valuing paper money over metal currency, like it’s so much better than the metal. I mean, even when I’m in foriegn countries, don’t you have the question if that $5 Canadian coin is actually worth five bucks?
k, gotta run
-o-Jkare
It’s Time
Or is there something specifically attractive about the weight of a quarter? We don’t seem to want to tarnish silver dollars and fifty cent pieces with the game, is that because of the money supply of these denominations? Wooden Nickels would obviously present a number of issues.
In fact, I would say that the quarter, specifically has special demand, especially in cities. One requires the quarter denomination both for laundry and for parking meters. This forces individuals to filter their budgeting habits to reserve their quarters for these purposes. If your looking at a parking ticket in a major metropolitan area, four quarters can be far more valuable than a dollar.
As far as looking at a quarter as a partial perspective? How can you actually have a partial perspective? Won’t that quarter of a perspective be its own cohesive Oneness of perspective, though without perhaps the gauge of a wider perspective.
-o-J