We Live Alone

". . . No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence -- that which makes its truth, its meaning -- its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream -- alone. . . ." (pg. 95)

Something in the World

"By heavens! there is something after all in the world allowing one man to steal a horse while another must not look at a halter." (pg. 91)

The Redeeming Facts of Life

"I went to work the next day, turning, so to speak, my back on that station. In that way only it seemed to me I could keep my hold on the redeeming facts of life. Still, one must look about sometimes; and then I saw this station, these men strolling aimlessly about in the sunshine of the yard. I asked myself sometimes what it all meant. They wandered here and there with their absurd long staves in their hands, like a lot of faithless pilgrims bewitched inside a rotten fence. The word 'ivory' rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some corpse. By Jove! I've never seen anything so unreal in my life. And outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion." (pg. 89)

The Meanings of Words

People change the meanings of their words as easily as they change the coins in their pockets.

A Place More Beautiful

"Is there perhaps any place more beautiful in the world than this, where, even if something ugly exists, you don't see it?" (pg. 340)

A Kind of Power

"Triumphant health in the general rout of constitutions is a kind of power in itself." (pg. 88)

An Insoluble Mystery From the Sea

"A slight clinking behind me made me turn my head. Six black men advanced in a file, toiling up the path. They walked erect and slow, balancing small baskets full of earth on their heads, and the clink kept time with their footsteps. Black rags were wound round their loins, and the short ends behind waggled to and fro like tails. I could see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking. Another report from the cliff made me think suddenly of that ship of war I had seen firing into a continent. It was the same kind of ominous voice; but these men could by no stretch of imagination be called enemies. They were called criminals, and the outraged law, like the bursting shells, had come to them, an insoluble mystery from the sea." (pg. 80)

Voice of the Surf

The voice of the surf heard now and then was a positive pleasure, like the speech of a brother. It was something natural, that had its reason, that had a meaning. (pg. 78)

A Fine Figure of a Man

A Frenchman, Mr. Astley, is merely a fine figure of a man. With this you, as a Britisher, may not agree. With it I also, as a Russian, may not agree--out of envy. Yet possibly our good ladies are of another opinion. For instance, one may look upon Racine as a broken-down, hobbledehoy, perfumed individual--one may even be unable to read him; and I too may think him the same, as well as, in some respects, a subject for ridicule. Yet about him, Mr. Astley, there is a certain charm, and, above all things, he is a great poet--though one might like to deny it. Yes, the Frenchman, the Parisian, as a national figure, was in process of developing into a figure of elegance before we Russians had even ceased to be bears. The Revolution bequeathed to the French nobility its heritage, and now every whippersnapper of a Parisian may possess manners, methods of expression, and even thoughts that are above reproach in form,while all the time he himself may share in that form neither in initiative nor in intellect nor in soul--his manners, and the rest, having come to him through inheritance. Yes, taken by himself, the Frenchman is frequently a fool of fools and a villain of villains.

Acquiring Capital

“I think that roulette was devised specially for Russians,” I retorted; and when the Frenchman smiled contemptuously at my reply I further remarked that I was sure I was right; also that, speaking of Russians in the capacity of gamblers, I had far more blame for them than praise — of that he could be quite sure.

“Upon what do you base your opinion?” he inquired.

“Upon the fact that to the virtues and merits of the civilised Westerner there has become historically added — though this is not his chief point — a capacity for acquiring capital; whereas, not only is the Russian incapable of acquiring capital, but also he exhausts it wantonly and of sheer folly. None the less we Russians often need money; wherefore, we are glad of, and greatly devoted to, a method of acquisition like roulette — whereby, in a couple of hours, one may grow rich without doing any work. This method, I repeat, has a great attraction for us, but since we play in wanton fashion, and without taking any trouble, we almost invariably lose.”

“To a certain extent that is true,” assented the Frenchman with a self-satisfied air.

“Oh no, it is not true,” put in the General sternly. “And you,” he added to me, “you ought to be ashamed of yourself for traducing your own country!”

“I beg pardon,” I said. “Yet it would be difficult to say which is the worst of the two — Russian ineptitude or the German method of growing rich through honest toil.”

“What an extraordinary idea,” cried the General.

“And what a RUSSIAN idea!” added the Frenchman.

I smiled, for I was rather glad to have a quarrel with them.

“I would rather live a wandering life in tents,” I cried, “than bow the knee to a German idol!”

“To WHAT idol?” exclaimed the General, now seriously angry.

“To the German method of heaping up riches. I have not been here very long, but I can tell you that what I have seen and verified makes my Tartar blood boil. Good Lord! I wish for no virtues of that kind. Yesterday I went for a walk of about ten versts; and, everywhere I found that things were even as we read of them in good German picture-books — that every house has its ‘Fater,’ who is horribly beneficent and extraordinarily honourable. So honourable is he that it is dreadful to have anything to do with him; and I cannot bear people of that sort. Each such ‘Fater’ has his family, and in the evenings they read improving books aloud. Over their roof-trees there murmur elms and chestnuts; the sun has sunk to his rest; a stork is roosting on the gable; and all is beautifully poetic and touching. Do not be angry, General. Let me tell you something that is even more touching than that. I can remember how, of an evening, my own father, now dead, used to sit under the lime trees in his little garden, and to read books aloud to myself and my mother. Yes, I know how things ought to be done. Yet every German family is bound to slavery and to submission to its ‘Fater.’ They work like oxen, and amass wealth like Jews. Suppose the ‘Fater’ has put by a certain number of gulden which he hands over to his eldest son, in order that the said son may acquire a trade or a small plot of land. Well, one result is to deprive the daughter of a dowry, and so leave her among the unwedded. For the same reason, the parents will have to sell the younger son into bondage or the ranks of the army, in order that he may earn more towards the family capital. Yes, such things ARE done, for I have been making inquiries on the subject. It is all done out of sheer rectitude — out of a rectitude which is magnified to the point of the younger son believing that he has been RIGHTLY sold, and that it is simply idyllic for the victim to rejoice when he is made over into pledge. What more have I to tell? Well, this — that matters bear just as hardly upon the eldest son. Perhaps he has his Gretchen to whom his heart is bound; but he cannot marry her, for the reason that he has not yet amassed sufficient gulden. So, the pair wait on in a mood of sincere and virtuous expectation, and smilingly deposit themselves in pawn the while. Gretchen’s cheeks grow sunken, and she begins to wither; until at last, after some twenty years, their substance has multiplied, and sufficient gulden have been honourably and virtuously accumulated. Then the ‘Fater’ blesses his forty-year-old heir and the thirty-five-year-old Gretchen with the sunken bosom and the scarlet nose; after which he bursts, into tears, reads the pair a lesson on morality, and dies. In turn the eldest son becomes a virtuous ‘Fater,’ and the old story begins again. In fifty or sixty years’ time the grandson of the original ‘Fater’ will have amassed a considerable sum; and that sum he will hand over to, his son, and the latter to HIS son, and so on for several generations; until at length there will issue a Baron Rothschild, or a ‘Hoppe and Company,’ or the devil knows what! Is it not a beautiful spectacle — the spectacle of a century or two of inherited labour, patience, intellect, rectitude, character, perseverance, and calculation, with a stork sitting on the roof above it all? What is more; they think there can never be anything better than this; wherefore, from their point of view they begin to judge the rest of the world, and to censure all who are at fault — that is to say, who are not exactly like themselves. Yes, there you have it in a nutshell. For my own part, I would rather grow fat after the Russian manner, or squander my whole substance at roulette. I have no wish to be ‘Hoppe and Company’ at the end of five generations. I want the money for MYSELF, for in no way do I look upon my personality as necessary to, or meet to be given over to, capital. I may be wrong, but there you have it. Those are MY views.”

Never Worth a Thought

Yes; even if a gentleman should lose his whole substance, he must never give way to annoyance. Money must be so subservient to gentility as never to be worth a thought.

One of the Workers

"It appeared, however, I was also one of the Workers, with a capital -- you know. Something like an emissary of light, something like a lower sort of apostle. There had been a lot of such rot let loose in print and talk just about that time, and the excellent woman, living right in the rush of all that humbug, got carried off her feet. She talked about 'weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways,' till, upon my word, she made me quite uncomfortable. I ventured to hint that the Company was run for profit.

"You forget, dear Charlie, that the labourer is worthy of his hire,' she said, brightly. It's queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there has never been anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset. Some confounded fact we men have been living contentedly with ever since the day of creation would start up and knock the whole thing over. (pg. 76 -77)

The Greatest Work of Art

Religion is more than just a source of inspiration for mankind's great works of literature, music, sculpture, and painting; it is itself mankind's most elaborate, most influential, and most misused work of art.

The Handle-End of Millions

"From behind that structure came out an impression of pale plumpness in a frock-coat. The great man himself. He was five feet six, I should judge, and had his grip on the handle-end of ever so many millions." (pg. 74)

We Live in a Flicker

"I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came here, nineteen hundred years ago -- the other day. . . . Light came out of this river since -- you say Knights? Yes; but it is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker -- may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday. Imagine the feelings of a commander of a fine -- what d'ye call 'em? -- trireme in the Mediterranean, ordered suddenly to the north; run overland across the Gauls in a hurry; put in charge of one of these craft the legionaries -- a wonderful lot of handy men they must have been, too -- used to build, apparently by the hundred, in a month or two, if we may believe what we read. Imagine him here -- the very end of the world, a sea the colour of lead, a sky the colour of smoke, a kind of ship about as rigid as a concertina -- and going up this river with stores, or orders, or what you like. Sand-banks, marshes, forests, savages, -- precious little to eat fit for a civilized man, nothing but Thames water to drink. No Falernian wine here, no going ashore. Here and there a military camp lost in a wilderness, like a needle in a bundle of hay -- cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile, and death -- death skulking in the air, in the water, in the bush. They must have been dying like flies here. Oh, yes -- he did it. Did it very well, too, no doubt, and without thinking much about it either, except afterwards to brag of what he had gone through in his time, perhaps. They were men enough to face the darkness. And perhaps he was cheered by keeping his eye on a chance of promotion to the fleet at Ravenna by and by, if he had good friends in Rome and survived the awful climate. Or think of a decent young citizen in a toga -- perhaps too much dice, you know -- coming out here in the train of some prefect, or tax-gatherer, or trader even, to mend his fortunes. Land in a swamp, march through the woods, and in some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed round him -- all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men. There's no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination -- you know, imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate."

He paused.

"Mind," he began again, lifting one arm from the elbow, the palm of the hand outwards, so that, with his legs folded before him, he had the pose of a Buddha preaching in European clothes and without a lotus-flower -- "Mind, none of us would feel exactly like this. What saves us is efficiency -- the devotion to efficiency. But these chaps were not much account, really. They were no colonists; their administration was merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect. They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force -- nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind -- as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea -- something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to. . . ."pg. 68-70)

A Sedentary Life

He was a seaman, but he was a wanderer, too, while most seamen lead, if one may so express it, a sedentary life. Their minds are of the stay-at-home order, and their home is always with them -- the ship; and so is their country -- the sea. One ship is very much like another, and the sea is always the same. In the immutability of their surroundings the foreign shores, the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life, glide past, veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance; for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny. For the rest, after his hours of work, a casual stroll or a casual spree on shore suffices to unfold for him the secret of a whole continent, and generally he finds the secret not worth knowing.(pg. 67 -78)

One of the Dark Places

The sun set; the dusk fell on the stream, and lights began to appear along the shore. The Chapman light-house, a three-legged thing erect on a mud-flat, shone strongly. Lights of ships moved in the fairway -- a great stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.

"And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth." (pg. 67)

Image via http://www.michaelmillichamp.ukgateway.net/page43.html

History is Neat

History is neat; life is messy.

The Truth About Bagels

A bagel is a doughnut that did not live up to its full potential.

The Old River

Image of the painting "Harwich lighthouse", by John Constable, c.1820.

"The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories. And indeed nothing is easier for a man who has, as the phrase goes, "followed the sea" with reverence and affection, than to evoke the great spirit of the past upon the lower reaches of the Thames. The tidal current runs to and fro in its unceasing service, crowded with memories of men and ships it had borne to the rest of home or to the battles of the sea. It had known and served all the men of whom the nation is proud, from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin, knights all, titled and untitled--the great knights-errant of the sea. It had borne all the ships whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time, from the Golden Hind returning with her round flanks full of treasure, to be visited by the Queen's Highness and thus pass out of the gigantic tale, to the Erebus and Terror, bound on other conquests-- and that never returned. It had known the ships and the men. They had sailed from Deptford, from Greenwich, from Erith-- the adventurers and the settlers; kings' ships and the ships of men on `Change; captains, admirals, the dark "interlopers" of the Eastern trade, and the commissioned "generals" of East India fleets. Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth! . . . The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires."

Through and Beyond Matter

"Through and beyond matter , spirit is hard at work, building." (pg. 53)

Cohere to the Utmost Possible Degree

"Each one of us, therefore, is the only person who can ultimately discover for himself the attitude, the approach (which nobody else can imitate), which will make him cohere to the utmost possible degree with the surrounding universe as it continues its progress; that cohesion being, in fact, a state of peace which brings happiness." (pg. 51-52)

The General Labour of Life

"During this first phase each one of us has to take up again and repeat, working on his own account, the general labour of life. Being is in the first place making and finding one's own self." (pg. 34)

Do the Smallest Thing

"Do not be afraid that this means that if we are to be happy we must perform some remarkable feat or do something quite out of the ordinary; we have only to do what any one of us is capable of: become conscious of our living solidarity with one great Thing, and then do the smallest thing in a great way." (pg. 55)

The Dim Hands of Instinct

“We deliver death into the dim hands of instinct and we grant it not one hour of our intelligence. It is surprising that the idea of death, which should be the most perfect and the most luminous, remains the flimsiest of our ideas and the only one that is backward? How should we know the one power we never look in the face? To fathom its abysses we wait until the most enfeebled, the most disordered moments of our life arrive.” (Maeterlinck in Tolstoy, pg. 12)

The Doctor

“The doctor knows this expression is inappropriate here, but he has put it on once and for all and can’t take it off – like a man who has donned a frock coat in the morning to make a round of social calls.” (pg. 109-110)

The Real Thing

“What if my entire life, my entire conscious life, simply was not the real thing?

It occurred to him that what had seemed utterly inconceivable before – that he had not lived the kind of life he should have – might in fact be true. It occurred to him that those scarcely imperceptible impulses of his to protest what people of high rank considered good, vague impulses which he had always suppressed, might have been precisely what mattered, and all the rest had not been the real thing.” (pg. 126-127)

Good-for-Nothing

"I'm not a good-for-nothing like you, here one day and there the next -- a fine life you gentlemen have! People who think only about how to kill others, yet one day, if you tell them they have to die, they shit their pants." (pg. 272)

When You Look

"...when you look down, it feels like you're looking at the whole thing, but when you look up, you realize you've only been looking at a part." (pg. 45-46)

Power

"The fact is that a basileus can use his power to do good, but to hold on to his power he has to do evil." (Eco, pg. 245)

Light Sweet Crude

In Texas nothing sets the mood
Like the price of light sweet crude.

Arabia is such a prude
But it goes mad for light sweet crude.

On cable news it’s almost lewd
When Liz says “Light sweet crude.”

It sounds like something done while nude
Probing holes for light sweet crude.

A beauty loves gifts, gold, and food,
But bathes each night in light sweet crude.

People simply come unscrewed
Once consumed by light sweet crude.

This Day in History

Everything you know

And what is vastly greater, everything you don’t

Fits into little vessels of time, just twenty four hours

Containing everything that has ever happened

Like debris tossed into bottomless wells.

You know the day you were born and the day you were married

Christmas, the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving are easy to remember

Easter is more difficult, depending on certain lunar calculations

But Easter comes as no surprise.

Yet one of these days will be your last

Study the calendar all you want, you can’t find it

Until you stumble on something incomprehensible

The limits of your awareness, no more abstractions

Only life in a suddenly particular case

You cannot feel the motion of the earth

Nor regret the speed of each degree of orbit

But you study each pain like a magi studies the sky

Each sign in the heavens, each tremor of earth.

After death, there will be the usual business

Your obituary will appear on one of those dates

Someone will read it and comment on your age

But no one comprehends the perpetual calendar

The very small, the very large, or the very old

The distance between stars and the flicker of prices

The way nature and markets use whatever is lying about

The designs of work, of love, and suffering

The hope that the next day will be better

The source code of the human heart.

Se non è vero è ben trovato

Se non è vero è ben trovato.

(Italian proverb, roughly translated as, "If it's not true, it's still a damn good story")

God is the Unique

"God is the Unique, and he is so perfect that he does not resemble any of the things that exist or any of the things that do not; you cannot describe him using your human intelligence, as if he were someone who becomes angry if you are bad or worries about you out of goodness, someone who has a mouth, ears, face, wings, or that is spirit, father or son, not even of himself. Of the Unique you cannot say he is or is not, he embraces all but is nothing; you can name him only through dissimilarity, because it is futile to call him Goodness, Beauty, Wisdom, Amiability, Power, Justice, it would be like calling him Bear, Panther, Serpent, Dragon, or Gryphon, because whatever you say of him you will never express him. God is not body, is not figure, is not form; he does not see, does not hear, does not know disorder and perturbation; he is not soul, intelligence, imagination, opinion, thought, word, number, order, size; he is not equality and is not inequality, is not time and is not eternity; he is a will without purpose. Try to understand, Baudolino: God is a lamp without flame, a flame without fire, a fire without heat, a dark light, a silent rumble, a blind flash, a luminous soot, a ray of his own darkness, a circle that expands concentrating on its own center, a solitary simplicity; he is...is..." She paused, seeking an example that would convince them both, she the teacher and he the pupil. "He is a space that is not, in which you and I are the same thing, as we are today in this time that doesn't flow." (Eco, pg. )

Not an Abstract Man

Ivan Ilych saw that he was dying, and he was in continual despair.

In the depth of his heart he knew he was dying, but not only was he not accustomed to the thought, he simply did not and could not grasp it.

The syllogism he had learnt from Kiesewetter's Logic: "Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal," had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself. That Caius — man in the abstract — was mortal, was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate from all others. He had been little Vanya, with a mamma and a papa, with Mitya and Volodya, with the toys, a coachman and a nurse, afterwards with Katenka and will all the joys, griefs, and delights of childhood, boyhood, and youth. What did Caius know of the smell of that striped leather ball Vanya had been so fond of? Had Caius kissed his mother's hand like that, and did the silk of her dress rustle so for Caius? Had he rioted like that at school when the pastry was bad? Had Caius been in love like that? Could Caius preside at a session as he did? "Caius really was mortal, and it was right for him to die; but for me, little Vanya, Ivan Ilych, with all my thoughts and emotions, it's altogether a different matter. It cannot be that I ought to die. That would be too terrible."

Such was his feeling.

"If I had to die like Caius I would have known it was so. An inner voice would have told me so, but there was nothing of the sort in me and I and all my friends felt that our case was quite different from that of Caius. and now here it is!" he said to himself. "It can't be. It's impossible! But here it is. How is this? How is one to understand it?"

He could not understand it, and tried to drive this false, incorrect, morbid thought away and to replace it by other proper and healthy thoughts. But that thought, and not the thought only but the reality itself, seemed to come and confront him. (Chapter 6)

Aunt Sallie's Song

The Master’s got a sack that he says he’s gonna fill.

He’s gonna to take it to the gin for a dollar bill. 

He says he’s gonna burn everything he doesn’t sell. 

Master, put me in that sack. I don’t wanna go to hell. 

The Master’s got a mule that will not pull a plow. 

He’s gonna take it to the barn, and trade it for a cow. 

He says he’s gonna burn everything he doesn’t sell. 

Master, let me drive that mule. I don’t wanna  go to hell. 

The Master’s got a river, where he kneels to take a drink.  

He’s gonna walk on water, where evil men will sink.

He says he’s gonna burn everything he doesn’t sell. 

Master, let me cross that river. I don’t wanna go to hell. 

The Master’s got a baby that’s as gentle as a lamb. 

He’s gonna ask the people “Who do you say I am?”

He says he’s gonna burn everything he doesn’t sell. 

Master, let me hold that baby. I don’t wanna go to hell.  

The Master’s got an army, and it’s marchin' from the sea.

 It’s comin' here in glory to fight for you and me. 

He says it’s gonna bring a final tribulation

The day of jubilee and the blood of our salvation. 

The Diving Board

The boy’s feet move too fast to count, 

Too fast to think about, really, 

Sprinting the short distance to the end of the board

Where they suddenly stop

And everything changes at once. 

He uses the laws of motion to rise in the air   

Where he crosses his legs and hangs motionless,

Like a little Buddah in equipoise

A floating monk in swimsuit and goggles.

His achievement does not last.

His secret is he does not expect it to. 

With knowledge bound by experience,

Something he can use but not explain, 

He falls with mathematical precision  

In a private vision of brief happiness. 

Extreme Unction

"The priest rose to take the crucifix; then she stretched forward her neck as one who is athirst, and glueing her lips to the body of the Man-God, she pressed upon it with all her expiring strength the fullest kiss of love that she had ever given. Then he recited the Misereatur and the Indulgentiam, dipped his right thumb in the oil, and began to give extreme unction. First upon the eyes, that had so coveted all worldly pomp; then upon the nostrils, that had been greedy of the warm breeze and amorous odours; then upon the mouth, that had uttered lies, that had curled with pride and cried out in lewdness; then upon the hands that had delighted in sensual touches; and finally upon the soles of the feet, so swift of yore, when she was running to satisfy her desires, and that would now walk no more."

Practicing Virtue

"Disdainful of honours, of titles, and of academies, like one of the old Knight-Hospitallers, generous, fatherly to the poor, and practising virtue without believing in it, he would almost have passed for a saint if the keenness of his intellect had not caused him to be feared as a demon." (Flaubert)

Laughing at Locksmiths

“One should always assume that rules, then as now, were made to be broken. Business, like love, laughs at locksmiths.” (Landes, 42)

Wu Wei

無為

Endless Forms Most Beautiful

"Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." (Darwin)

Advice to Prophets

Declaiming on hell
A prophet dines well
One thing is for sure
Good news doesn't sell.

Impressions of the San Andreas Fault

The deformity makes life visible here
Amid a dry land, sand and broken stone
A little moisture creeps to the surface
Where living things cluster around the cracks
Even prophets need water and a little shade
They wander the shattered face of the planet
Lead congregations of ingrates who grumble
"We are hungry," "We are thirsty," "Where is the Lord?"
Until in their discomfort they finally discover
The best places for life are sometimes the most dangerous.

The Whole Congregation Grumbled

They set out from Elim, and all the congregation of the people of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt. And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, and the people of Israel said to them, "Would that we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger."

Then the LORD said to Moses, "Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not. On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather daily." So Moses and Aaron said to all the people of Israel, "At evening you shall know that it was the LORD who brought you out of the land of Egypt, and in the morning you shall see the glory of the LORD, because he has heard your grumbling against the LORD. For what are we, that you grumble against us?" And Moses said, "When the LORD gives you in the evening meat to eat and in the morning bread to the full, because the LORD has heard your grumbling that you grumble against him—what are we? Your grumbling is not against us but against the LORD."

Then Moses said to Aaron, "Say to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, 'Come near before the LORD, for he has heard your grumbling.'" And as soon as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, they looked toward the wilderness, and behold, the glory of the LORD appeared in the cloud. And the LORD said to Moses, "I have heard the grumbling of the people of Israel. Say to them, 'At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread. Then you shall know that I am the LORD your God.'"

In the evening quail came up and covered the camp, and in the morning dew lay around the camp. And when the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a fine, flake-like thing, fine as frost on the ground. When the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another, "What is it?" For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, "It is the bread that the LORD has given you to eat. This is what the LORD has commanded: 'Gather of it, each one of you, as much as he can eat. You shall each take an omer, according to the number of the persons that each of you has in his tent.'" And the people of Israel did so. They gathered, some more, some less. But when they measured it with an omer, whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack. Each of them gathered as much as he could eat. And Moses said to them, "Let no one leave any of it over till the morning." But they did not listen to Moses. Some left part of it till the morning, and it bred worms and stank. And Moses was angry with them. Morning by morning they gathered it, each as much as he could eat; but when the sun grew hot, it melted.

On the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers each. And when all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses, he said to them, "This is what the LORD has commanded: 'Tomorrow is a day off solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the LORD; bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil, and all that is left over lay aside to be kept till the morning.'" So they laid it aside till the morning, as Moses commanded them, and it did not stink, and there were no worms in it. Moses said, "Eat it today, for today is a Sabbath to the LORD; today you will not find it in the field. Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, which is a Sabbath, there will be none."

On the seventh day some of the people went out to gather, but they found none. And the LORD said to Moses, "How long will you refuse to keep my commandments and my laws? See! The LORD has given you the Sabbath; therefore on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Remain each of you in his place; let no one go out of his place on the seventh day." So the people rested on the seventh day.

Now the house of Israel called its name manna. It was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey. Moses said, "This is what the LORD has commanded: 'Let an omer of it be kept throughout your generations, so that they may see the bread with which I fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you out of the land of Egypt.'" And Moses said to Aaron, "Take a jar, and put an omer of manna in it, and place it before the LORD to be kept throughout your generations." As the LORD commanded Moses, so Aaron placed it before the testimony to be kept. The people of Israel ate the manna forty years, till they came to a habitable land. They ate the manna till they came to the border of the land of Canaan.

All the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of Sin by stages, according to the commandment of the LORD, and camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, "Give us water to drink." And Moses said to them, "Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the LORD?" But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, "Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?" So Moses cried to the LORD, "What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me." And the LORD said to Moses, "Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink." And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. And he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the LORD by saying, "Is the LORD among us or not?"

Nothing Worth the Trouble

"She was not happy--she never had been. Whence came this insufficiency in life--this instantaneous turning to decay of everything on which she leaned? But if there were somewhere a being strong and beautiful, a valiant nature, full at once of exaltation and refinement, a poet's heart in an angel's form, a lyre with sounding chords ringing out elegiac epithalamia to heaven, why, perchance, should she not find him? Ah! How impossible! Besides, nothing was worth the trouble of seeking it; everything was a lie. Every smile hid a yawn of boredom, every joy a curse, all pleasure satiety, and the sweetest kisses left upon your lips only the unattainable desire for a greater delight." (Flaubert)

"Nonetheless she was not happy, had never been happy. Why then was life so inadequate? Why did she feel this instantaneous decay of the things she relied on? If there existed somewhere a strong and hansome being, a valiant nature imbued with both exaltation and refinement, the heart of a poet in the shape of an angel, a lyre with strings of bronze, souding elegiac nuptial songs toward the heavens -- why, why could she not find him? How impossible it seemed! And anyway, nothing was worth looking for; everying was a lie. Each smile hid a yawn of boredom, each joy a curse, each pleasure its aftermatch of disgust, and the best of kisses left on your lifps only the unattainable desire for a higher delight." (Flaubert, Bucccaneer Books translation, pg. 267)

We Must Not Touch Our Idols

"One must not touch idols; the gilt rubs off on one's hands." (Flaubert, Buccaneer Books translation, pg. 265).

"We must not touch our idols; the gilt sticks to our fingers." (Flaubert, Google Books, pg. 261)

A Cracked Kettle

"The human language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out a tune for a dancing bear, when we hope with our music to move the stars." (Flaubert, pg. 188)

An Indefinite Condition

“Even when traders get things ‘right,’ markets can hardly be expected to oscillate with the precision of sine waves. Prices and spreads vary with the uncertain progress of companies, governments, and even civilizations. They are no more certain than the societies whose economic activity they reflect. Dice are predictable down to the decimal point; Russia is not; how traders will respond to Russia is less predictable still. Unlike dice, markets are subject not merely to risk, an arithmetic concept, but also to the broader uncertainty that shadows the future generally. Unfortunately, uncertainty, as opposed to risk, is an indefinite condition, one that does not conform to numerical straitjackets.” (Lowenstein, pg. 235)

The Produce Aisle

The problem working here
Is how quickly things lose
What little value they have
Even the best goes bad, eventually.

The stacks of apples on display
Like books on a scholar’s shelf
All the incomplete world
Reduced to reliable facts of name and price.

Only those who’ve worked here know:
Truth is a perishable fruit
Drawn from the harvest of another generation.

The Way That Worlds are Made

This is the way that worlds are made
The perturbation of empty space
A sudden roughness
Collapsing gases
Exploding solar masses
Dwarf stars and red giants
The thin air of dead stars
The heavy elements of supernovas
Cosmic dust, the ices of space
The raw material of planets
Rotating fields that form spheres
The solar wind that sweeps the ice away
Near a star, rocks and heavy elements
Towards the edge, ices and gas
The separation of densities
Dense planets with stratified densities
A great iron catastrophe
A magnetic field
Collisions
The plates on the face of the Earth
The drift of continents
The water from comets
The energy that rips continents apart
The magnetic record of stones
Ridges and trenches
Heat driven convection cells in plastic layers
Mountains formed by collisions
Floating worlds
The tremors of creation
Beyond the sense of mortal tongues
The Star-Child sings.

A Kind of Reason

Emotions are a kind of reason.

Driven by Adaptability

"From a "selfish gene" perspective, competitiveness and greed need no particular explanation beyond the obvious - I'll do whatever I can to get my genes into the next generation, even if that means stomping on all the little people on my way to the top. But if helping others by being selfless and altruistic decreases the chances of getting my genes into the next generation, why would I do it? The short answer is that it is a myth that evolution is driven by selfishness; it is, in fact, driven by adaptability, and in a social primate species like ours, more often than not the most adaptable thing you can do to survive and reproduce is to be cooperative and altruistic." (Shermer, pg. 125)

An Old Friend

Death is an old friend we try to ignore.

Imagining Other Worlds

"There is nothing better than imagining other worlds," he said, "to forget the painful one we live in. At least so I thought then. I hadn't yet realized that, imagining other worlds, you end up changing this one." (Eco, pg. 99)

The Mandate of Heaven

天命

A Sense of Justice

"The notion that bad individuals should not be allowed to prosper does not exist in most species, yet it has been crucial to human evolution. It permits collaboration and has thus done as much as language and culture to allow human civilisation to flourish and people to dominate the planet.

A sense of justice argues that people should be free to keep the fruits of their labours, but also that the over-mighty rich need to be cut down from time to time and the poor occasionally exalted. It damns the murderer while recognising that, sometimes, even murder is justified. The perverted bargain with justice which Tosca makes is the heart of the opera’s tragedy. A sense of justice, then, reins in people’s other Darwinian instincts and curbs their excesses. For human nature has evolved to be both good and bad—and it is evolution that allows human nature to know the difference."

The Economist, December 18th, 2008

Tormented by the Muses

"You see," he said, "great poets are not always diarrhoic, sometimes they're styptic, and those are the greater ones. You must seem tormented by the Muses, able to distill only one couplet every now and then." (Eco, pg. 82)

Sailors and Theologians

"You don't have to be in a place in order to know everything about it," Abdul replied. "Otherwise sailors would be more learned than theologians." (Eco, pg. 77)

Come Dance With Me

Come dance with me when flowers bloom
And scent the air like French perfume
Through open windows in each room
And ripeness bids us both, “Consume.”

Come dance with me on evenings fair
I’ll bring you Chinese silks to wear
We’ll dance so close, the crowd will stare
As pleasure stirs the summer air.

Come dance with me in harvest time
Until the clocks of midnight chime
We’ll drink our tea with Persian lime
And bathe in silver light sublime.

Come dance with me in winters cold
I’ll bring you chests of Spanish gold
From towns where kings are bought and sold
And men grow rich before they’re old.

Come dance with me and wear my ring
Through all the seasons life will bring
Do not resist, lest love take wing
Release your gown. Undo the string.

Come dance with me and share my fate
Two happy hearts in happy state
Let’s lie beneath the garden gate
And there enjoy our joint estate.

Come dance with me, forget our trouble
Although the world’s reduced to rubble,
Foundations vanish like a bubble,
And fire consumes the barren stubble.

Dinner at the Rainbow Room

In the Sumerian hours of evening
Waiting on a main course of miso glaze Chilean sea bass
And petit filet mignon perigourdine sauce,
Drinking an unusual Italian merlot -- because California wines give me a headache --
With fine, soft tannins and hints of French and Slovenian oak
It is hard to imagine that light jazz does not fill all the rooms to the horizon.

This high above the streets and the subtle needs of other men
The buildings of New York stand like illuminated punch cards,
Like dominoes of some strange and monumental numerology.

The white light becomes yellow in the distance
Like bright seeds scattered in fields of black earth
It is impossible to believe that somewhere
Among the light and dark spaces of labor and repose
Someone is unhappy
Someone is suffering
Someone is dead.

Is it the elevation that makes such beliefs possible?
No wonder men climb mountains to find answers,
Make their sacrifices and consume their sacred meals.
In another age, I would say it was the voice of gods.
Now, I know it is a finely crafted conceit that apprehends things
That finds a message in a landscape of binary code
Between grilled pepper shrimp and vanilla cream meringue cake.

A Triune Nature

A hypothesis...

Human nature is triune; it is three distinct natures in one.

1. Unbridled self-interest, "the law of the jungle;" the organism's will to survive and reproduce; culturally suppressed as original sin or an inherently evil nature; long thought a threat to preserving the social order; a zero-sum operator; moral anarchy;  politics of plunder; the predator or the parasite; slavery or serfdom of others

2. Unbridled altruism; a social adaptation to enhance the survival of the group at the expense of the individual; culturally reinforced as a duty owed to a superior or as a submission to a supernatural will; lives of the saints; long thought necessary for preserving social order; zero-sum operator; moral community; politics of family and close friends; emotional capital; love

3. Rational self-interest; a social adaptation to enhance both the survival of the group and the life of the individual; recognition of individual rights and property; peaceful competition and cooperation; does not preserve social order; rather, it results in an adaptive social order viewed as chaotic by some and self-serving by others; non-zero operator; moral order; politics of general welfare; symbiosis

A triune nature equips humans to adapt to a wide variety of environments and social structures, but leaves us with a perpetual motive tension that we articulate as competing and at times irreconcilable moral codes.

This is no mere hierararchy of needs. All three natures exist and are operative simultaneously. Each, alone, is a complete operating system for human action, but each is equally complete with the others. Sexual jealousy is no different from professional jealousy. 

The paradox of human nature is that it is not additive: one equals three and three equals one. 

Human nature is not judged in terms of its content; rather, we judge the content as best we can by its visible results. 

The Second Sermon the Warpland

by Gwendolyn Brooks

For Walter Bradford

1.

This is the urgency: Live!
and have your blooming in the noise of the whirlwind.

2.

Salve salvage in the spin.
Endorse the splendor splashes;
stylize the flawed utility;
prop a malign or failing light--
but know the whirlwind is our commonwealth.
Not the easy man, who rides above them all,
not the jumbo brigand,
not the pet bird of poets, that sweetest sonnet,
shall straddle the whirlwind.
Nevertheless, live.

3.

All about are the cold places,
all about are the pushmen and jeopardy, theft--
all about are the stormers and scramblers but
what must our Season be, which starts from Fear?
Live and go out.
Define and
medicate the whirlwind.

4.

The time
cracks into furious flower. Lifts its face
all unashamed. And sways in wicked grace.
Whose half-black hands assemble oranges
is tom-tom hearted
(goes in bearing oranges and boom).
And there are bells for orphans--
and red and shriek and sheen.
A garbageman is dignified
as any diplomat.
Big Bessie's feet hurt like nobody's business,
but she stands--bigly--under the unruly scrutiny, stands 
in the wild weed.

In the wild weed
she is a citizen,
and is a moment of highest quality; admirable.

It is lonesome, yes. For we are the last of the loud.
Nevertheless, live.

Conduct your blooming in the noise and whip of the 
whirlwind.

Agape and Philia

"Brotherly love in the literal sense comes at the expense of brotherly love in the biblical sense; the more precisely we bestow unconditional kindness on relatives, the less of it is left over for others." (Wright, pg. 160)

The Duty of Poets

"Rhetoric is the art of saying well that which may or may not be true, and it is the duty of poets to invent beautiful falsehoods." (Eco, pg. 55)

The Voice of Souls

"Can he have a soul, Niketas wondered, this character who can bend his narrative to express different souls? And if he has different souls, through which mouth, as he speaks, will he tell me the truth?" (Eco, Pg. 50)

The Dead Who Speak

"People will believe anything provided it's the dead who speak." (Eco, pg. 247)

Dress and Gold

"Kyot could have been one of those Lebanese who dress badly but have pockets full of gold pieces" (Eco, pg. 244)

Hate Your Neighbor

"That's how it is in our parts. You may hate the foreigner, but most of all you hate your neighbor. And if the foreigner helps us harm our neighbor, then he's welcome."

"But why?"

"Because people are wicked, as my father always said, but the people of Asti are worse than Barbarossa." (Eco, pg. 47)

A Man of Letters

"If you want to become a man of letters and perhaps write some Histories one day, you must also lie and invent tales, otherwise your History would become monotonous. But you must act with restraint. The world condemns liars who do nothing but lie, even about the most trivial things, and it rewards poets, who lie only about the greatest things." (Eco pg. 43)

Matters of Law

"Niketas had long since learned that the Latins, though they were barbarians, were extremely complicated, hopeless when it came to fine points and subtleties if a theological question was at stake, but capable of splitting a hair four ways on matters of law."

Questions of Government

"But this basileus of yours, this emperor, as you call him, was he crowned in Pavia or in Rome? And why in Italy, if he's the basileus of the Alamans?"

"One thing at a time, Master Niketas. For us Latins things aren't as simple as they are for you Romei. In your country someone gouges out the eyes of the current basileus, and he becomes basileus himself., everybody agrees, and even the patriarch of Constantinople does what the new basileus tells him, otherwise the basileus gouges out his eyes too."

"Now don't exaggerate."

"Exaggerate? Me? When I got here they told me right away that the basileus, Alexis III, ascended the throne because he'd blinded the legitimate ruler, his brother Isaac."

"Doesn't anybody ever eliminate his predecessor and seize the throne in your country?"

"Yes, but they kill him in battle, or with some poison, or with a dagger."

"You see? You people are barbarians. You can't imagine a less bloody way of managing questions of government. And besides, Isaac was Alexi's brother. Brother doesn't kill brother."

(Eco, pg. 32)

The Problem of My Life

"...the problem of my life is that I've always confused what I saw with what I wanted to see." 

(pg 30)

Maybe We Want Too Much

"Maybe we want too much," Rabbi Solomon said, "but at this point we can't help wanting it." (Eco, pg. 340)

The Dislocated

I fell asleep in Cincinnati, and woke up 36,000 feet above England

A little lost but still fed by a happiness drawn from the roots of another place

Like a cutting suddenly removed from a garden to a botanist’s specimen box

Carried through customs to a train station and given a free map of London

A color-coded vascular knot of streets that gave me a destination 

The names on signs where I could roll my luggage around with purpose

Up and down the sidewalks where scattered groups of workers smoked

Chatting about their lives and the abundant lies of perception

How much has to be left out for any of it to be useful. 

The St. James on Buckingham Gate has Cuban cigars and Polish waiters

A place to adjust to another time and purchase some much-needed rest

Until the open window of my room in the cool afternoon 

Admits the voices of children playing on an asphalt school ground 

The shouts of familiar words in unfamiliar accents

Strange adverbs of time and place and manner of action

The playground is empty when I finally get out of bed and leave

Take their memory, a gift they never knew they gave, one that cost them nothing

But has it really changed anything?

From London, the road leads west, towards the edge of old Saxon Briton

Where moonrakers once stirred the ponds for cheese

Towards a hilltop with holy wells and steep sides facing south 

To a room in the Old Bell, near where the west wall used to stand 

War makes a village.

 

Malmesbury pulls me out of my room like water from a spring. 

The sounds of bells from the abbey and the church near the car park 

Small tires on wet pavement on the wrong side of the road

An Alfa Romeo or Audi with a small engine

It is impossible to drive fast on narrow roads with blind curves

So many pedestrians for such a small place

People walk, run towards the center of the old town 

Footsteps on stone sidewalks before stone houses of the same stone 

Is there a stone left in these fields after twenty-five centuries?

If not stones, then certainly children and the old people who follow them

Here bound together by the elastic space between generations

The young are eager to live, to be somewhere other than where they are

Would the silent old ones with canes run if they could

Has the acquisition of so many memories taught them 

Nothing worth keeping is made in just one lifetime?

Something is happening in Malmesbury tonight 

Up the hill from the Ingleburn and the Avon

There is a celebration near the grave of King Athelstan

It draws people up the sidewalks and past straight walls of broken stone

An old man going the opposite way, heading west out of town alone 

Perhaps he forgot something, perhaps he is weary from the hard work of history 

Perhaps he is thinking of the way he used to measure his life in good years 

Now he hopes for a good day or two

A boy runs, two children skip, excited as only the young are

Unconcerned about what they will do and how they will pay for it 

A woman carries a dish covered in aluminum foil, a gift or a product 

A celebration must have food, prepared fresh and enjoyed right away. 

Up Abbey Row, white lights illuminate the old ruins

Strands of bulbs across High Street glow alternating red, green and yellow

Lights above children excited by a taste of freedom, life out of the ordinary

The allure of familiar faces in unfamiliar shades and poses

A night when something, anything might happen, everything might change

Either under the lights or in the dark places of the town

There could be love, or pleasure, or danger, and everything might change again.

A four-piece band that has not missed a meal plays Christmas carols

Just steps away from the ancient dead, behind wet stone and iron

Inflatable playgrounds near Market Cross, the drone of compressors

The living move without fear past the dead in shadows

The living move past stones no more than ornaments

A kind of yard art in the perception of those who do not yet realize 

Everything important begins in a crowd of inconsequential events

Only the passage of time conceals what is lost, reveals what is worth possessing

What should be thrown away, forgotten, or buried in the ground.

E pur si muove

Right now, in the imperfect probabilities of this moment

The surest thing that we possess is not stable

Even the past is not stationary; it moves with the present

The heretics of one generation become the heroes of the next

And little children learn what once would have cost a man his life.

No Imagination

"In any case, the time I'm now talking about, he went down very angry, ready for a hard war. With him was the marquess of Monferrato, as well as the cities of Alba, Acqui, Pavia, and Como..."

"But you just said that Pavia had gone over to the League?"

"Did I? Oh, yes, before. But in the meantime it had come back to the emperor."

"Oh, Lord!" Niketas cried, "our emperors dig each other's eyes out, but at least, as long as they see, we know whose side they are on....."

"You people have no imagination."

You See What a City Is?

"You see what a city is?" Ghini said to him. "And if it's like this before it's even finished, imagine what will happen afterwards: it's another life. Every day you see new people -- for the merchants, just think, it's like having the Heavenly Jerusalem; for the knights, since the emperor forbade them to sell lands so as not to divide the fief, and they were bored to death in the countryside, now they command companies of bowmen, they ride out in parades, they give orders left and right. But things don't prosper just for the gentry and the merchants: it's a providence also for a man like your father, who doesn't have much land but has some livestock, and people arrive in the city and ask him for stock and pay cash; they're beginning to sell for ready money and not through barter. I don't know if you understand what that means: if you exchange two chickens for three rabbits sooner or later you have to eat them, otherwise they grow too old, whereas two coins you can hide under you mattress and they're good ten years from now, and if you're lucky they stay there even if enemies come into your house. Besides, it's happened in Milan and in Lodi and Pavia, and it will also happen here with us: it's not that the the Ghinis or the Aularis have to keep their mouths shut and only the Guascos or the Trottis give the orders. We're all part of those who make the decisions: here you can become important even if you're not a noble, and this is the fine thing about a city, and it's specially fine for one who isn't noble, and is ready to get himself killed, if he really has to (but it's better not), because his sons can go around saying: My name is Ghini and even if your name is Trotti, you're still shit" (Eco, pgs. 162-163). 

Too Small for a Republic

"South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum."

Former South Carolina Attorney General and anti-secessionist James L. Petigru, 1860

Cover the State With Ruin

"I would be willing to appeal to the god of battles -- if need be, cover the state with ruin, conflagration, and blood rather than submit." 

 

Pro-secessionist South Carolina Governor Francis W. Pickens, November 1860 (Edgar, pg. 376)

Voices from the Necropolis

Nature is not cruel, just sometimes clumsy
Stumbling upon new possibilities
In the slow violence of geologic time.

The streets came first, familiar names on paper
Drawn broad and straight in squares
Like razor wounds on earth
Secure high ground near water
Where rivers the colors of rust and jade
Cut through the boneless crust of clay
An Eocene shore of warm and iceless seas
Lay bare the granite ribs of sinless worlds.

Where we could not build rivers, we built streets
Our marks upon the surface, the work of men
Blind with purpose you still misunderstand
The beauty you admire, the vows that you exchange
Was not our beauty and were not our vows
Even cruelty is redefined in time.

We built streets we thought too broad to burn
For a city that would burn at the end of our age.

We built because we had to
The deep necessity of our nature
What is art but knowledge in reserve
Perhaps never useful, but used nevertheless
More than instinct, less than revelation
Our precarious urge to disturb the surface of things.

On random days in summer, the heat could kill a man
The air was hot enough to make us believe
We could not breath, and we would never be happy again
The physics of temperature and humidity
Drove us to seek the cool spaces of our creation,
Shade trees, high ceilings and porches,
Where we tried to beg or steal or trade our happiness.

What is the soul that it is so easily troubled by a happiness that cannot last?
Something shocked and saddened by constant motion
When everything is crushed like water trapped in ice
The rain of restless storms, the clouds that block the sun
The sudden and unexpected chill of unforgiving seasons.

The ages end more quickly now
The transient world reforms itself
Unconstrained by the chemistry of the past.

Prologue

Why do you want to know something that can only make you miserable?
Do not mistake what is truly useful for what is merely true
Watch your diet, exercise, balance your checkbook
Enjoy the stained glass of churches and museums
Each luminous fragment of meaning arranged in painless beauty
Like shells scattered on a beach by a storm
Like the endless light of shattered stars 
Something made beautiful by one catastrophe after another.

No Stories Without Meaning

"In saving my life you have given me what little future remains to me and I will repay you by giving back the past you have lost..."

"But maybe my story has no meaning."

"There are no stories without a meaning. And I am one of those men who can find it even where others fail to see it. Afterwards the story becomes the book of the living, like a blaring trumpet that raises from the tomb those who have been dust for centuries...Still it takes time, you have to consider the events, arrange them in order, find the connections, even the least visible ones." 

(Eco, pg. 12)

Peace and Security

"When people are saying, "Peace and security, then suddenly disaster comes upon them, like labor pains upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape."

1 Thessalonians 5: 3

Timeline

1670 - Charles Town founded

1680 - Charles Town moved to present location, Oyster Point

1778 - First state constitution, Protestant Christian preference

1786 (March 22) - Columbia created by act of legislature

1789 to 1799- The French Revolution

1789 (August 24) - St. Mary's, first Catholic Church in the Carolinas and Georgia, established in Charleston. Records kept in French until 1822. 

1790 - Second state constitution, disestablishment 

1799 - Napoleon I stages coup d'etat

1801 - Thomas Jefferson elected third President, succeeding John Adams; served until 1809

1803 - The Louisiana Purchase under President Jefferson

1804 - Napoleon crowns himself Emperor of the French

1805 - WR born in SC

1809 - James Madison elected President; served until 1817

1812 - France invades Russia

1826 (July 4) - Thomas Jefferson dies

1826 - Bishop England preaches to the US House of Representatives

1828 - Mills Building of the SC Lunatic Asylum completed

1838 (April 28) - Ansonborough district in Charleston, including St. Mary of the Annunciation Roman Catholic Church, is destroyed by a fire

1861 (April 12) - The Civil War begins

1864 (Oct.) - POW camp on grounds of lunatic asylum 

1865 (Feb.) - POW camp moved from grounds of lunatic asylum

1865 (Feb. 17) - Columbia burns

1865 (Feb. 26) - Skirmish at Lynch's Creek 

1865 (April 9) - The Civil War ends

1865 (May 13) - WR dies, POW

Ancient Morning Light

Ancient morning light 

Fills my room with a question 

I almost answer. 

But I will not get out from

Underneath all my blankets.

My cat knows morning

Makes his choice to stay in bed

Sleeping at my feet.

But the trough is planed with glass

I feel, and too, the small pond.

Mist From the Blue Ridge

Mist from the Blue Ridge

Comes down the old forest roads 

To Columbia.

The fishermen in their boats

Always catch what they cannot see. 

Lay There

"Now lay there, me bye. Lay there quite till the doomsday trump. And dont ye be fomenting no more rebellions down there where ye're burrning." (pg. 189)

Pro Patria Mori

"When a man gives his life for his country he wants to get the worth of it, if you see what I mean" (pg. 190).

Regret of a Particular Regional Form

"When I heard this, that the general had died because of his consideration for men who a short time before had been shooting at him and doing all their power to wreck his cause, I remembered what my father had said about the South bearing within itself the seeds of defeat, the Confederacy being conceived already moribund. We were sick from an old malady, he said: incurable romanticism and misplaced chivalry, too much Walter Scott and Dumas read too seriously. We were in love with the past, he said; in love with death.

He enjoyed posing as a realist and straight thinker -- war was more shovelry than chivalry, he said -- but he was a highly romantic figure of a man himself and he knew it, he with the creased forehead and his tales of the war in Texas, with his empty sleeve and his midnight drinking beneath the portrait of his wife in that big empty house in New Orleans. He talked that way because of some urge for self-destruction, some compulsion to hate what he had become: an old man with a tragic life, who sent his son off to a war he was to maimed to take part in himself. It was regret. It was regret of a particular regional form" (pg. 199-200).

Great Things

"All great things mature slowly" 

(Campbell, quoting Schopenhauer, pg. 39)

A Vision of A Universe

“What these pages [in the National Geographic Atlas of the World] opened to me was the vision of a universe of unimaginable magnitude and inconceivable violence. Billions, upon billions, literally, of roaring thermonuclear furnaces scattering from each other. Each thermonuclear furnace being a star and our sun among them. Many of them actually blowing themselves to pieces, littering the outermost reaches of space with dust and gas out of which new stars with circling planets are being born right now. And then from still more remote distances beyond all these there come murmurs, microwaves which are echoes of the greatest cataclysmic explosion of all, namely the Big Bang of creation which according to recent reckonings must have occurred some 18 billion years ago” (Program 5, track 13).

The Artist and Myth

"Myth must be kept alive. The people who can keep it alive are artists of one kind or another. The function of the artist is the mythologization of the environment and the world" (Program 3, track 9).

Bill Moyers on Faith & Reason

Life, Intended

No one gets to live the life he intended, but everyone gets the chance to enjoy the life he lives.

Meaning in Suffering

"If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete." (pg. 76)

One Thing I Dread

"There is only one thing I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings."

Viktor Frankl quoting Fyodor Dostoevsky (pg. 75)

The Ineffable

The best things cannot be told. The second best are misunderstood. The rest is what we talk about everyday.

Paraphrase of Joseph Campbell, remembering Heinrich Zimmer

A Mightly Avalanche

"Let me tell you what is coming. After the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives you may win Southern independence, but I doubt it. The North is determined to preserve this Union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people as you are, for they live in colder climates. But when they begin to move in a given direction, they move with the steady momentum and perseverance of a mighty avalanche."

Sam Houston of Texas, 1861

Idols of the Tribe

"At State, everybody calls diversity dispersity. What happens is, everybody has their own clubs, their own signs, their own sections where they all sit in the dining hall -- all the African Americans are over there? ... and all the Asians sit over't these other tables? -- except for the Koreans? -- because they don't get along with the Japanese, so they sit way over there? Everybody's dispersed into their own little groups -- and everybody's told to distrust everybody else? Everybody's told that everybody else is trying to screw them over -- oops!" Laurie pulled a face and put her fingertip over her lips -- "I'm sorry!" She rolled eyes and smiled. "Anyway, the idea is, every other group is like prejudiced against your group, and no matter what they say, they're only out to take advantage of you, and you should have nothing to do with them -- unless you're white, in which case all the others are not prejudiced against you, they're like totally right, because you really are racist and everything, even if you don't know it? Everybody ends up dispersed into their own like turtle shells, suspicious of everybody else and being careful not to fraternize with them." (pg. 550)

A Modern Creed

"The man sitting across from him, the butterball grotesquely squeezed into a dark gray sweater, was of another sort entirely, despite the fact that they were both Jewish and agreed on practically every public issue of the day. Both believed passionately in protecting minorities, particularly African Americans, as well as Jews. Both regarded Israel as the most important nation on earth, although neither was tempted to live there. Both instinctively sided with the underdog; police violence really got them steamed. Both were firm believers in diversity and multiculturalism in colleges. Both believed in abortion, not so much because they thought anyone they knew might want an abortion as because legalizing it helped put an exhausted and dysfunctional Christendom and its weird, hidebound religious restraints in their place. For the same reason, both believed in gay rights, women's rights, transgender rights, fox, bear, wolf, swordfish, halibut, ozone, wetland, and hardwood rights, gun control, contemporary art, and the Democratic Party. Both were against hunting and, for that matter, woods, fields, mountain trails, rock climbing, sailing, fishing, and the outdoors in general, except for golf courses and the beach." (Wolfe, pg. 511)