Like New

Death is an old joke, but it comes like new to everyone.

The Romantic Structure of the Earth

"...he loved the romantic structure of the earth which filled his pockets with chinking coins."

Neither Poem Nor Novel

A few thoughts on re-reading Look Homeward, Angel. 

Wolfe's style is an unfortunate example of what happens when a born poet tries to write a great novel. The result is neither poem nor novel, but a mosaic of both genres, a strained ambition to contain everything in a single narrative. It might have been a great series of poems. It might have even been a great novel.

Wolfe is a random adverb generator. They appear in his sentences at the most unexpected places. "Remembering speechlessly," "He had long brown mustaches that hung straight down mournfully," "A brakeman came draftily into the dirty plush coach," and "The huge bulk of the hills was foggily emergent" are four examples from nearly the first page.

Finally, Wolfe believed in full employment for adjectives. Why use one when two or three might be lying around out of work? 

The Fruit of Forty Thousand Years

"Each moment is the fruit of forty thousand years. The minute-winning days, like flies, buzz home to death, and every moment is a window on all time."

I Made Him Happy

"You were hastening his death, carrying him to the extreme frenzy, the consumption of all the senses. And you were satisfying your own taste for fairy tales: you were proud of your inventions."

"Perhaps. But for the short while he still lived, I made him happy."

Arrival and Ground Transportation

1.

I entered San Francisco between two ages

A young woman who overplayed the bitch

A nearsighted old man who read the news

Like he had to smell the meaning of each word.

In the awkward intimacy of strangers

Closer than friends

We tried to think of something else.

It takes a day and nearly $900 to get here

Five hours in coach, $2 headphones, two movies

Three beverage carts, four cookies, two bags of peanuts

Three new time zones, two trips to the lavatory, no meal

And always the recirculated, desiccated, and odorous air.

An arm’s length away

Outside our little metal cloud

Life was impossible.

2.

On the edge of the continent

Alone in a dark seat on the dark side of earth

I rode away in a balm of luxurious darkness

Under storm clouds the weight of one atmosphere

A black sea containing all the names of creation

Past rooms with open windows and shaded lamps

Like aids to navigation, the lights of homes

Where people hammer out of darkness

Chains of meaning released into the world
A grammar made from darkness and surrendered to it.

Koan from The Gateless Gate

趙州、因僧問、其甲乍入叢林。
A monk said to Jõshû, "I have just entered this monastery.
乞師指示。
Please teach me."
州云、喫粥了也未。
"Have you eaten your rice porridge?" asked Jõshû.
僧云、喫粥了也。
"Yes, I have," replied the monk.
州云、洗鉢盂去。
"Then you had better wash your bowl," said Jõshû.
其僧有省。
With this the monk gained insight.

The Cardinal Virtues

Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.

A Rare Smile of Eternal Reassurance

He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey. Precisely at that point it vanished—and I was looking at an elegant young rough-neck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd. Some time before he introduced himself I’d got a strong impression that he was picking his words with care.

Pages and Everything

On a chance we tried an important-looking door, and walked into a high Gothic library, panelled with carved English oak, and probably transported complete from some ruin overseas.

A stout, middle-aged man, with enormous owl-eyed spectacles, was sitting somewhat drunk on the edge of a great table, staring with unsteady concentration at the shelves of books. As we entered he wheeled excitedly around and examined Jordan from head to foot.

“What do you think?” he demanded impetuously.

“About what?” He waved his hand toward the book-shelves.

“About that. As a matter of fact you needn’t bother to ascertain. I ascertained. They’re real.”

“The books?”

He nodded.

“Absolutely real—have pages and everything. I thought they’d be a nice durable cardboard. Matter of fact, they’re absolutely real. Pages and—Here! Lemme show you.”

Taking our scepticism for granted, he rushed to the bookcases and returned with Volume One of the “Stoddard Lectures.”

“See!” he cried triumphantly. “It’s a bona-fide piece of printed matter. It fooled me. This fella’s a regular Belasco. It’s a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop, too—didn’t cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?”

He snatched the book from me and replaced it hastily on its shelf, muttering that if one brick was removed the whole library was liable to collapse.

Testimony to Romantic Speculation

We all turned and looked around for Gatsby. It was testimony to the romantic speculation he inspired that there were whispers about him from those who found little that it was necessary to whisper about in this world.

The Meaning of Death

"Does death have any meaning? 

Well, yes, it does. Sex without death gets you single-celled algae and fungi; sex with a mortal soma gets you the rest of the eukaryotic creatures. Death is the price paid to have trees and clams and birds and grasshoppers, and death is the price paid to have human consciousness, to be aware of all that shimmering awareness and all that love."

Its Own Improbability

"I have come to understand that the self, my self, is inherently sacred. By virtue of its own improbability, its own miracle, its own emergence." (pg. 59)

Getting Something to Happen

"Life, we can now say, is getting something to happen against the odds and remembering how to do it." (pg. 63)

All There is to Biochemistry

"And that's basically all there is to biochemistry. Every cell is packed with thousands of different kinds of enzymes, each enzyme displaying a distinctive surface topology...and each thereby able to catalyze one or several specific chemical reactions." (pg. 39)

Self Assembly

"Amino acids that prefer to be next to one another, like a group of greasy ones, might associate to form one domain; amino acids with negative charges might line up next to amino acids with positive charges to form a second domain; a bulky amino acid might cause a protuberant domain to stick out farther. This all happens spontaneously -- the process is called self-assembly -- and the result is a protein with a distinctive overall shape and size that displays a collection of very specific domains." 

A Long, Existential Shudder

"We are told that life is so many manifestations of chemistry and we shudder, a long existential shudder." (pg. 33)

Our Thermal and Chemical Circumstances

"Life from non life, like wine from water, has long been considered a miracle wrought by gods or God. Now it is seen to be the near inevitable consequence of our thermal and chemical circumstances." (pg. 28-29)

A Simplicity of Heart

Sometimes they came and went without having met Gatsby at all, came for the party with a simplicity of heart that was its own ticket of admission.

The Inexhaustible Variety of Life

"...high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life."

The Edge of Stale Ideas

As for Tom, the fact that he “had some woman in New York.” was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a book. Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.

A Beautiful Little Fool

“It’ll show you how I’ve gotten to feel about—things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. ‘all right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”

Deep Books and Long Words

“Tom’s getting very profound,” said Daisy, with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. “He reads deep books with long words in them."

The Dramatic Turbulence

I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.

Consoling Proximity of Millionaires

I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbor’s lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month.

Fine Health

There was so much to read, for one thing, and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. (Chapter 1)

Freedom of the Neighborhood

It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.

“How do you get to West Egg village?” he asked helplessly.

I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighborhood.

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer. (Chapter 1)

Delayed Teutonic Migration

I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm centre of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go East and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man.

A Matter of Infinite Hope

"...the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth." (pg. 1)

The Mind of Man is Capable of Anything

"The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there -- there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were -- No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it -- this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity -- like yours -- the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you -- you so remote from the night of first ages -- could comprehend. And why not? The mind of man is capable of anything -- because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valour, rage -- who can tell? -- but truth -- truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder -- the man knows, and can look on without a wink. But he must at least be as much of a man as these on the shore. He must meet that truth with his own true stuff -- with his own in-born strength. Principles won't do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags -- rags that would fly off at the first good shake. No; you want a deliberate belief. An appeal to me in this fiendish row -- is there? Very well; I hear; I admit, but I have a voice, too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced. Of course, a fool, what with sheer fright and fine sentiments, is always safe.

The Sums Not Counted

"Each of us is all the sums he has not counted: subtract us into nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas."

The Unpardonable Sin

After all, for a seaman, to scrape the bottom of the thing that's supposed to float all the time under his care is the unpardonable sin. No one may know of it, but you never forget the thump -- eh? A blow on the very heart. You remember it, you dream of it, you wake up at night and think of it -- years after -- and go hot and cold all over. (pg. 104)

Unfair Competition

"We will not be free from unfair competition till one of these fellows is hanged for an example,' he said. 'Certainly,' grunted the other; 'get him hanged! Why not? Anything -- anything can be done in this country." (pg. 101)

A Single Window

Life is much more successfully looked at from a single window.

What Foul Dust Floated in the Wake of His Dreams

No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.

The Middle-Aged Married Man's Lament

for P.J. O’Rourke

The IRS wants more from me
Back taxes and a penalty.

My kids think I'm an ATM
And my account belongs to them.

They tell me that I’m old and square
They laugh because I’ve lost my hair.

Tuition bills are coming soon
I’ll pay them with a five year balloon.

The van needs oil, brakes and tires
I wonder when that tag expires?

My ex-wife wants a bigger check
My new wife wants a bigger deck.

Sometime this year I’ll cut the grass
And get that woman off my ass.

She tells me I must lose some weight
No booze, no bars, and no debate.

That’s typical of all her sex
What’s good today is bad the next.

Fat cheeks are cute in L&D
A diaper’s great for poop and pee.

A woman just can’t help her heart
She thinks it’s cute when babies fart.

But when you’re old, she’s not so sweet.
She’ll push your wheelchair in the street.

Fart once at dinner with a guest
She'll squash you like a little pest.

Assessing your resolve and mass

She'll sent you to aerobics class.

And she will not appreciate
That pin-up of your first prom date.

She'll hate the smell and steady glow
Of every brand of Maduro.

So if my flight should crash and burn
Don’t waste your tears on me
Just tell my quack I won’t return
For that endoscopy.

I'll check off what I unachieved
And have a jubilee
Smiling like a man reprieved
A prisoner set free.

I’ll laugh throughout that final dive
Relieved of all my fear
And if you should find me alive
Don’t tell them I’m still here.

Eldorado Exploring Expedition

"This devoted band called itself the Eldorado Exploring Expedition, and I believe they were sworn to secrecy. Their talk, however, was the talk of sordid buccaneers: it was reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity, and cruel without courage; there was not an atom of fore-sight or of serious intention in the whole batch of them, and they did not seem aware these things are wanted for the work of the world. To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe.

My Influential Friend

It was a great comfort to turn from that chap to my influential friend, the battered, twisted, ruined, tin-pot steamboat. I clambered on board. She rang under my feet like an empty Huntley & Palmer biscuit-tin kicked along a gutter; she was nothing so solid in make, and rather less pretty in shape, but I had expended enough hard work on her to make me love her. No influential friend would have served me better. She had given me a chance to come out a bit -- to find out what I could do. No, I don't like work. I had rather laze about and think of all the fine things that can be done. I don't like work -- no man does -- but I like what is in the work -- the chance to find yourself. Your own reality -- for yourself, not for others -- what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means." (pg. 96-97)

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.