“Relax? I can’t relax! Nor can I yield, relent, or… Only two synonyms? Oh my! I’m losing my perspicacity! Aaaaa!”
~ Lisa Simpson
Month: August 2008
To the Lighthouse, page 14
. . . when, suddenly, in she came, stood for a moment silent (as if she had been pretending up there, and for a moment let herself be known), stood quite motionless for a moment against a picture of Queen Victoria wearing the blue ribbon of the Garter; when all at once he realized that it was this: it was this:–she was the most beautiful person he had ever seen.
With stars in her eyes and veils in her hair, with cyclamen and wild violets–what nonsense was he thinking? She was fifty at least; she had eight children. Stepping through fields of flowers and taking to her breast buds that had broken and lambs that had fallen; with the stars in her eyes and the wind in her hair– he took her bag.
“Good-bye, Elsie,” she said, and they walked up the street, she holding her parasol erect and walking as if she expected to meet someone round the corner, while for the first time in his life Charles Tansley felt an extraordinary pride; a man digging in a drain stopped digging and looked at her, let his arm fall down and looked at her; for the first time in his life Charles Tansley felt an extraordinary pride; felt the wind and the cyclamen and the violets for he was walking with a beautiful woman. He had hold of her bag.
Weekend Einstein
One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike—and yet it is the most precious thing we have.
—Quoted in Albert Einstein: Creator and Rebel, by Banesh Hoffmann (New York: Viking, 1972), v; The Expanded Quotable Einstein, collected and edited by Alice Calaprice (Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 261
Knowledge:
The search for truth and knowledge is one of the finest attributes of a man, though often is most loudly voiced by those who strive for it the least.
Authority:
To punish me for my contempt of authority, fate has made me an authority myself. Continue reading
Dude, Where’s My Philosophy?
What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night.
It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime.
It is the little shadow which runs across the grass
and loses itself in the sunset.
~ Crowfoot, Blackfoot Warrior and Orator Continue reading
Was ist das–die Philosophie?
The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term. Under “things in the broadest possible sense” I includes such radically different items as not only “cabbages and kings”, but numbers and duties, possibilities and finger snaps, aesthetic experience and death. To achieve success in philosophy would be . . . to “know one’s way around” with respect to all these things, not in that unreflective way in which the centipede of the story knew its way around before it faced the question, “how do I walk?” but in the reflective way which means that no intellectual holds are barred.
~ Wilfred Sellars Continue reading
Sugar Magnolia :: Grateful Dead
Sugar Magnolia blossom’s blooming
Head’s all empty and I don’t care
Saw my baby down by the river
Knew she’d have to come up soon for air Continue reading
Attics of My Life :: Grateful Dead
In the attics of my life
Full of cloudy dreams unreal
Full of tastes no tongue can know
And lights no eye can see
When there was no ear to hear
You sang to me Continue reading
Looks Like Rain :: Grateful Dead
I woke today…
And felt your side of bed
The covers were still warm where you’d been layin’.
You were gone…
My heart was filled with dread.
You might not be sleepin’ here again Continue reading
Granita :: Umberto Eco
The present manuscript was given to me by the warden of the local jail in a small town in Piedmont. The unreliable information this man furnished us about the Continue reading
Life Itself is a Quotation
All the genuine, deep delight of life is in showing people the mud-pies you have made; and life is at its best when we confidingly recommend our mud-pies to each other’s sympathetic consideration. ~ J. M. Thorburn
A Dialogue About a Dialogue :: J. L. Borges
A: Absorbed in our discussion of immortality, we had let night fall without lighting the lamp, and we couldn’t see each other’s faces. With an offhandedness or gentleness more convincing than passion would have been, Macedonio Fernandez’ voice said once more that the soul is immortal. He assured me that the death of the body is altogether insignificant, and that dying has to be the most unimportant thing that can happen to a man. I was playing with Macedonio’s pocketknife, opening and closing it. A nearby accordion was infinitely dispatching La Comparsita, that dismaying trifle that so many people like because it’s been misrepresented to them as being old. . . . I suggested to Macedonio that we kill ourselves, so we might have our discussion without all the racket.
Z: (mockingly) But I suspect that at the last moment you reconsidered.
A: (now deep in mysticism) Quite frankly, I don’t remember whether we committed suicide that night or not.
[From Collected Fictions, by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Andrew Hurley]
Gravity :: DeWitt Henry
I think of small deaths, a sneeze, an orgasm; how close such seizures are at once to vacancy and to the utter concentration of black holes, pure gravity. At once experience past will, past memory or thought; and an absence too, a non-experience. Comatose, the epileptic fit; no chance to dream. And yet like dreams, I hear Continue reading
Love Love Love :: The Mountain Goats
King Saul fell on his sword
when it all went wrong
and Joseph’s brothers sold him down the river
for a song
and Sonny Liston rubbed some Tigerbalm
in his glove
some things you do for money
and some you do for love love love
Raskolnikov felt sick
but he couldn’t say why
when he saw his face reflected
in his victim’s twinkling eye
some things you do for money
and some you’ll do for fun
but the things you do for love
are gonna come back to you one by one
love love is gonna lead you by the hand
into a white and soundless place
now we see this
as in a mirror dimley
then we shall see each other
face to face
and way out in Seattle
young Kurt Cobain
snuck out to the garden
put a bullet in his brain
snakes in the grass beneath our feet
rain in the clouds above
some moments last forever
and some flare out with love love love
No Woman No Cry :: Bob Marley
Said – said – said: I remember when we used to sit In the government yard in
Trenchtown, Oba – obaserving the ‘ypocrites As they would mingle with the good people we meet. Good friends we have, oh, good friends we’ve lost
Along the way. In this great future, you can’t forget your past; So dry your tears, I seh.
No, woman, no cry; No, woman, no cry. ‘Ere, little darlin’, don’t shed no tears: No, woman, no cry.
Said – said – said: I remember when-a we used to sit In the government yard in Trenchtown. And then Georgie would make the fire lights,
As it was logwood burnin’ through the nights. Then we would cook cornmeal porridge,
Of which I’ll share with you; My feet is my only carriage, So I’ve got to push on through. But while I’m gone, I mean:
Everything’s gonna be all right! Everything’s gonna be all right! Everything’s gonna be all right! Everything’s gonna be all right! I said, everything’s gonna be all right-a! Everything’s gonna be all right! Everything’s gonna be all right, now! Everything’s gonna be all right! So, woman, no cry; No – no, woman – woman, no cry. Woman, little sister, don’t shed no tears; No, woman, no cry.
I remember when we used to sit In the government yard in Trenchtown. And then Georgie would make the fire lights,
As it was logwood burnin’ through the nights. Then we would cook cornmeal porridge,
Of which I’ll share with you; My feet is my only carriage, So I’ve got to push on through. But while I’m gone:
No, woman, no cry; No, woman, no cry. Woman, little darlin’, say don’t shed no tears; No, woman, no cry. Eh!
(Little darlin’, don’t shed no tears! No, woman, no cry. Little sister, don’t shed no tears! No, woman, no cry.)
Upward Over the Mountain :: Iron & Wine
Mother don’t worry, I killed the last snake that lived in the creek bed
Mother don’t worry, I’ve got some money I saved for the weekend
Mother remember being so stern with that girl who was with me?
Mother remember the blink of an eye when I breathed through your body? Continue reading
The Floating Library 