by

Dreamtigers :: J. L. Borges

In my childhood I was a fervent worshiper of the tiger: not the jaguar, the spotted “tiger” of the Amazonian tangles and the isles of vegetation that float down the Paraná, but that striped, Asiatic, royal tiger, that can only be faced by a man of war, on a castle atop an elephant. I used to linger endlessly before one of the cages at the zoo; I judged vast encyclopedias and books of natural history by the splendor of their tigers. (I still remember those illustrations: I who cannot rightly recall the brow or the smile of a woman.) Childhood passed away, and the tigers and my passion for them grew old, but still they are in my dreams. At that submerged or chaotic level they keep prevailing. And so, as I sleep, some dream beguiles me, and suddenly I know I am dreaming. Then I think: this is a dream, a pure diversion of my will; and now that I have unlimited power, I am going to cause a tiger.

Oh, incompetence! Never can my dreams engender the wild beast I long for. The tiger indeed appears, but stuffed or flimsy, or with impure variations of shape, or of an implausible size, or all too fleeting, or with a touch of the dog or the bird.

[From Dreamtigers, by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Mildred Boyer]

by

Argumentum Ornithologicum :: J. L. Borges

I close my eyes and see a flock of birds. The vision lasts a second or perhaps less; I don’t know how many birds I saw. Were they a definite or an indefinite number? This problem involves the question of the existence of God. If God exists, the number is definite, because how many birds I saw is known to God. If God does not exist, the number is indefinite, because nobody was able to take count. In this case, I saw fewer than ten birds (let’s say) and more than one; but I did not see nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, or two birds. I saw a number between ten and one, but not nine, eight, seven, six, five, etc. That number, as a whole number, is inconceivable; ergo, God exists.

[From Dreamtigers, by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Mildred Boyer]

[This would have made more sense (or less) if all he had written was: “The number, as a whole number, is inconceivable; ergo, God exists.” But that wouldn’t have been Borges. Apparently, his entire argument hangs on the word “inconceivable” (spoken with a lisp) . . . but how that word makes this a sound argument, I don’t know . . . I love Borges.]

by

George Saunders’ Amazon Blog!

[I like this George Saunders. He’s funny. I recommend his story “Winky” from his book Pastoralia. I’ll try to post it at some point. . .]

My First Blog Posting: In Which I Ventriliquate

I have to admit I’m a little unsure about this whole blogging thing. The whole idea of writing to an unknown and possibly nonexistent audience seems – I don’t know – a little narcissistic. Kind of mentally ill? I mean, it’s very similar to what I do, day in and day out, inside my head. But now here I am, typing it out.

Still, when in Rome, as the saying goes, one must blog, or people will start yanking on your toga and calling you a Luddite, in Italian.

So how about this – I’ll do this in an interview format, in which I ask questions of me. This should work well, as long as the questioner isn’t an idiot. Continue reading →

by

“Perspicacity” Quote of the Day

“Relax? I can’t relax! Nor can I yield, relent, or… Only two synonyms? Oh my! I’m losing my perspicacity! Aaaaa!”
~ Lisa Simpson

by

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.

by

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 →

by

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 →

by

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 →

by

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 →

by

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 →

by

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 →

by

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 →

by

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

Continue reading →

by

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]

by

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 →