Favorite Quote
James Joyce, Dubliners, last line of “The Dead.”
His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
Being And Nothingness (L’Être et le Néant)
“The trees were floating. Thrusting toward the sky? Collapsing rather: at any moment I expected to see the trunks shrivel like weary pricks, curl up and fall to the ground in a soft, black, crumpled heap. They did not want to exist, only they could not help it; that was the point. So they performed all their little functions, quietly, unenthusiastically, the sap rose slowly into the earth. But at every moment they seemed on the verge of dropping everything and obliterating themselves. Tired and old, they went on existing, unwillingly and ungraciously, simply because they were too weak to die, because death could come to them only from the outside: melodies alone can proudly carry their own death within them like an internal necessity; only they don’t exist. Every existent is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance. I leaned back and I closed my eyes. But pictures, promptly informed, sprang forward and filled my closed eyes with existences: existence is a repletion which man can never abandon.”
Jean-Paul Sartre – Nausea
favorite quote – on writing
“We need more true mystery in our lives, Hem. The completely unambitious writer and the really good unpublished poem are the things we lack most at this time. There is, of course, the problem of sustenance.”
–Evan Shipman from Hemingway’s A Movable Feast (the Hemingway book for those who don’t like Hemingway).
Favourite Quote – Northside Cafe, Winterset, IA
Many see it as pap but I hope you’ll indulge me with two.
” I’ll only say this once. I’ve never said it before. This kind of certainty comes but just once in a lifetime.”
“. . . . it seems right now that all I’ve ever done in my life has been making my way here to you.”
. . . Robert James Waller, The Bridges of Madison County
Boethius – The Consolation of philosophy, Book I, section 4
If first you rid yourself of hope and fear
You have dismayed the tyrant’s wrath:
But whosoever quakes in fear or hope,
Drifting and losing his mastery,
Has cast away his shield, has left his place,
And binds the chain with which he will be bound.
Gutenberg
favorite quote – on substance and style
“It is content, or rather the consciousness of content, that fills the void. But the mere presence of content is not enough. It is style that gives content the capacity to absorb us, to move us; it is style that makes us care.”
. . . Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction
About the sexiest damn twitter app I have ever seen
It’s called DestroyTwitter and the only word to describe it is “slick.” I’d give you a better explaination, but I really just be parroting the gorgeously laid out documentation.
favorite quote
If people have time today, I’d like to see passages or quotes from favorite books. Regular flockers can, of course, make separate posts. Anyone else who wants to participate can use the Walken account. Include an Amazon (or favorite bookseller) link.
speeding bullet stopped by hair weave
Police in Kansas City, Mo., said a woman’s tight hair weave stopped a bullet, rescuing her from injury and likely saving her life.
ice age fossils include almost intact mammoth
I wish the pictures were better.
Scientists are studying a huge cache of Ice Age fossil deposits recovered near the famous La Brea Tar Pits in the heart of the nation’s second-largest city.
Among the finds is a near-intact mammoth skeleton, a skull of an American lion and bones of saber-toothed cats, dire wolves, bison, horses, ground sloths and other mammals.
“It’s like a paleontological Christmas,” research team member Andie Thomer wrote in a blog post in July.
optical illusions and consciousness
A series of optical illusions (apparently the towers are leaning at the same angle), and an article on optical illusions and consciousness.
By studying what happens when the brain looks at an illusion–or is tricked by a magician–the researchers can separate what the eye itself picks up from the brain’s interpretation of what is going on.
“When perception doesn’t match physical reality, it allows you to isolate and understand the actual brain process,” says Macknik, who directs the Laboratory of Behavioral Neurophysiology at Barrow.
Macknik believes that these brain processes reveal nothing less than clues to human consciousness. “Those circuits [that interpret visual stimuli] include the neurons that comprise consciousness,” says Mackink. “If we understand these circuits and understand their neural underpinnings, we will learn the circuits that make consciousness.”
The mathematics of beauty.
Horace Brock has a theory:
Designed objects, Brock writes, can be broken down into “themes” and “transformations.” A theme is a motif, such as an S-curve; a transformation might see that curve appear elsewhere in the design, but stretched, rotated 90 degrees, mirrored, or otherwise reworked.
Aesthetic satisfaction comes from an apprehension of how those themes and transformations relate to each other, or of what Brock calls their “relative complexity.” Basically – and this is the nub of it – “if the theme is simple, then we are most satisfied when its echoes are complex . . . and vice versa.”
He gives the example of a chair in his collection designed by the English Regency architect Henry Holland. The dominant design motif, which can be found in the chair’s arm, is an S-curve. (Mathematically, an S-curve, which twists in space, is complex when compared to a straight line or unidirectional curve.) The back of the chair, writes Brock, sees that S-curve first reversed and then rotated 90 degrees – a simple two-step transformation.
Complex theme, simple transformation: Voila! The chair is beautiful.
misheard Steven Spielberg at the Oscars
Oh debt to the light that has shone on all of us.
The World Beard & Mustache Competition
These are pictures of Winners of the 2007 World Beard and Moustache Championship. Yes the guy on the lower right has his beard in the form of London’s Tower Bridge.
(Via OK Great)
I’ve begun reading
Richard Hughes’s novel The Fox in the Attic.
I very much like what Hilary Mantel says of Hughes in the introduction: “He writes in short chapters, many of which are self-contained, miniaturized works of art. Some went through fifty drafts. There were times when most of his daily work was deletion. He would claim to have done 50,000 words, which would ‘progress’ to 10,000.”
Creekwood Lane
Galena Territory. Jo Daviess County, Illinois. Driftless Region, USA. In the gloaming. 21 February 2009.
David Orr
has an article in the New York Times online about poetry and greatness which may make you cringe or may have you nodding in agreement. (The starting point is the inclusion of John Ashbery in the Library of America, the first living poet to be so treated.) Oddly Orr notes at one point that it took Dickinson 100 years to get in the greatness club and yet apparently sees no clash between that and his earlier suggestion that we may be about to lose all our greatness in American poetry. (I suppose he can’t imagine there’s another Dickinson lurking around right now who hasn’t been noticed.) Nor does he seem to acknowledge that Dickinson’s poems do not ‘look’ great–they’re short, personal and often obscure–nor that a poet like Sappho has endured more than 2000 years on likewise tiny poems. To me, Orr’s questions seem too utterly American and far too narrow, though I won’t deny that he makes some astute observations.
Since it’s Sheila’s birthday and all…
…I think we should go out for drinks. I’ll get the first round. What’ll y’all have?
Happy birthday, Sheila!
Outasight.
I used to be able
to squawk like a pterodactyl. (Ask Sheila.) Now I just draw like one.
[Repeat to fade]
Cindy said, “Mum’s the word.” Ain’t that the truth.
And I say, “Bird’s the word, too.” Y’all.
Just feeling silly. Laughing in the face of — you know — doom. Or doomsayers.
Read more
At Work
At Work is another fantastic series of photographs from The Boston Globe.
Anatomy of a Salutation
Bobulate parses contemporary uses of the salutation (via):
It’s fun to sing
the theme to The Beverly Hillbillies to the tune of Paperback Writer.
Polydactyl Cats Freak Me Out
Yes, it’s true. I once had a gardener, his name, not important here. It was Frank. He was a good gardener, always kept the posies looking excellent. He found this thing out in the garden last summer. Huddled amidst the rose bushes and half covered with mulch was this animal. It was dead, most likely from the poison I keep scattered around the yard. Vermin. They’re nobody’s friend. Let me tell you.
I took it, in a burlap bag, to the only person I thought could identify this beast. Frank’s brother Harold ran a laundry business. He reads books about animals on the side. He’s virtually a zoologist. And his clothes. Impeccably clean.
So I toss this burlap pile on his desk. Harold’s desk. His face was one of horror when he opened the bag. Indescribable. He had a bologna sandwich on his desk. Looked delicious. He pulled this…thing…out of the bag and he said this. “el Chupacabra”. I don’t know Spanish. He explained it was a mysterious creature. One of myth. I start thinking, hey, maybe this Harold guy doesn’t know crap from shoe polish. He explained more. The animal had teeth like a wolverine and when alive supposedly has a disposition like Frank’s wife. Woof. You don’t cross her.
I’m listening to Harold. It’s intense. Sitting mere inches from a beast that could rip our faces off. I’m struck with a paralyzing fear and left breathless when this THING leaps up on Harold’s desk. Frank. He’s passed out. Drinks like a fish. I scream, what the hell is that?! “Diablo!” Harold says. I don’t speak Portugese, I tell him. It had hands like catcher’s mitts. Green eyes. Bushy fur. It’s staring at me. Then it makes its way toward the sandwich. Harold. It’s devouring his sandwich with those massive hands. Holds it like a carnie with a funnel cake. Can’t blame it. It looked delicious. And turns to me. I freeze. The beast launches into my lap. “DIABLO!” cries Harold. Nothing can tame this creature. I feel the pressure to pee, in my pants. It subsides. “GET DOWN!” I’m like, Harold, what are you saying. Unbelievable.
“My cat. Diablo. He’s friendly. Pet him.” I cup the beast’s head in my hand. Fear. “He’s got six toes on each foot.” I stood up, dumping the beast onto the hard floor. Linoleum, I think. Had to hurt. In silence I left. I’m not sure. I need to twitter this.
Walken out.
