December 2008
32 posts
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“The wind outside! We talk about the weather a lot in Ireland but the truth is...”
– Distorte, who’s quite funny and can really write.
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“The elasticity of what Homo sapiens will believe in an effort to convince...”
– Topherchris. I agree, and without any condescension implied for that effort, which I consider to be one of the finer aspects of the human mind. The fact that some patently fabricated systems of belief retain resonance for us demonstrates how naturally we seek meaning, despite much despair-inducing...
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“Art will always want us. It finds us infinitely desirable.”
– Clive James, describing the “lust for discovery [that is] a feeling as concentrated and powerful as amorous longing, with the advantage that we never [have] to fear rejection.” James’ point is elsewhere, and I don’t wish to linger on the notion of art as an escape except to...
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The Ragbag
I was writing a short post to direct interested readers to The Ragbag, an excellent, excellent tumblelog which has recently discussed:
apophenia, the perception of “patterns or connections in random or meaningless data” (which is a good way of discussing some elements of schizophrenia, paranoia, and manic artistry);
the Shaw Phonetic Alphabet, a set of characters created from a...
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“It is a common failing of all people with little talent and more learning than...”
– Georg Cristoph Lichtenberg, quoted by Clive James in an essay on the craft of writing that was at once illuminating and embarrassing for me; much of it describes, with as much wit is in this sentence, the sorts of failings I detect in my prose (and, it follows, my thought).
There is often a...
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“Wallace was also wary of ideas. He was perpetually on guard against the ways in...”
– James Ryerson, in an essay on David Foster Wallace’s college philosophy thesis (posted by the always-astute Greg Brown). This is a brilliant point.
I like Wallace very much, but I think any honest critical appraisal of his work must admit that this tension was not necessarily one deliberately...
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Do You Know Superdoofus-Stratodrive? →
I spent several months living in his apartment building; I say that it was his not because he owned it but because he had a workshop in the basement and an enormous, homemade telescope on the roof beside a brick fireplace and wrought-iron furniture, as well as some rooms on the thirteenth floor with enormous windows, half of which were covered with sheets of gallium foil (he said aluminum foil was...
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Disaster, Art, Life
Although few like to admit it, Walker Percy’s observation about disaster is largely true: in our era of contented tranquility, superabundance, and fading value systems, we tend to crave catastrophe as a source of meaning. We may noisily declaim that this economic collapse is terrible, that this or that hurricane or fire or administration is so horrific that we’ve lost our faith in humanity, but in...
“The only revolution worthwhile was the one-man revolution within the heart. Each...”
– Ammon Hennacy, quoted by The Bronze Medal.
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'France' and 'Survivors'
KB posted these two poems from Siegfried Sassoon:
France (1914) She triumphs in the vivid green Where sun and quivering foliage meet; And each soldier’s heart serene; When death stood near them they have seen The radiant forests where her feet Move on a breeze of silver sheen.
And they are fortunate, who fight For gleaming landscapes swept and shafted And crowned by clouds pavilions...
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Orphaned Memories
There are many posts circulating today concerning memory and forgetting, topics of significant personal interest to me; most seem to stem from the NYT’s recent obituary of HM, a man who –like many of Oliver Sacks’ most notable patients- illuminated in his dysfunction an aspect of how our minds work. Benjamin Hilts’ father, it emerges, actually wrote what sounds like a compelling book on HM and the...
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Barbie, Laughter, Happiness
The excellent Jeff Miller quotes Ann Althouse on changes to Barbie:
“Not only does Barbie now look about 13 years old, she’s got her mouth open in the can’t-stop-talking position. I have never even accepted Barbie smiling. To me, Barbie has always been this [solemn] face. She doesn’t smile. She’s not a child. She’s a glamorous, sophisticated woman. She’s not an empty-headed...
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Last Exit - Crackin.
Naturally, this was posted...
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Bathroom Politics: War and Defeat
Robot-Heart posed a hypothetical bathroom question, which reminded me of the intricate and fraught politics of sharing such spaces. I suppose it’s normal enough to feel at least ambivalent about communal zones where we use partially sexual and partially unhygienic personal equipment to eliminate wastes from our otherwise angelic bodies. Such small rooms are fast filled with some of our deepest...
“The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke, quoted by DHK. It is also true that one sign of maturity seems to be reticence about more and more, a diminishing sense of one’s import, a refusal to force one’s self into all discourse. This is probably related to increasing defeats; some things seem desecrated by...
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“A crowd is the untruth.”
– Søren Kierkegaard, quoted by Mise en Abyme. Kierkegaard has a knack for saying terribly astute and unpleasant things; we all long to be subsumed in our crowds, the small crowds, the large crowds, the political parties, the artistic movements, the scenes of like-minded people who share our urges to...
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“Suppose that you could mark the molecules in a glass of water; then pour the...”
– Erwin Schrödinger, quoting an example used by Lord Kelvin, to demonstrate how small atoms are (that is: how many of them there are in everything, like glasses of water).
As he notes, however, it’s not so much that atoms are small as it is that we are large, very large. Schrödinger begins What Is...