Man plans, God laughs.
Yiddish Proverb
Editorial: Think of all the ludicrous demands made by the fickle gods of ancient mythology: sacrifice this virgin, build a boat, fetch me that animal, if you do this you live and if you don’t you die. On and on. I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about how some events happen in ways that are surprising and even poetic, as if the gods are indeed crazy and indeed have a wicked sense of humor. The impatient man just misses the bus. The composer loses his hearing. The marathoner dies of heart disease. But how is it that the alternative to the gods giving you exactly what you cannot handle is equally vexing: when the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers. This means the gods have us suffering coming and going-- when they don’t and do grant our wishes. The fact that both scenarios are coincidences means little to people who tend to fault or credit the divine for everything that occurs in patterns. Either way I certainly enjoy the proverbs and clichés that spring up around their explanation, especially Mentsch tracht, Gott lacht!
2009-09-19
2009-09-10
2009-09-03
Nana korobi, ya oki.
Fall seven times - rise eight.
Japanese Proverb
Editorial: The first time I heard this proverb it was mangled in the mouth of a young man who had made a series of colossally poor decisions that confounded common sense. The last in the series was to lie ceaselessly even when he knew that everyone else was on to him. Because the truth seemed destined to go with him to the grave I was thoroughly surprised when he eventually opened up. I asked him why he came around and his reply was the mangled proverb. The gist, however, was straight and true, and profoundly simple: you get up from the place where you fall. Nana korobi, ya oki. Fall seven times - rise eight. The Chinese have a proverb that makes essentially the same point: Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up. Here’s the sentiment told another way: When you reach the point where you just can’t give any more of your time or effort, stand very still. Then take one more step. (thanks, elsah cort).
Japanese Proverb
Editorial: The first time I heard this proverb it was mangled in the mouth of a young man who had made a series of colossally poor decisions that confounded common sense. The last in the series was to lie ceaselessly even when he knew that everyone else was on to him. Because the truth seemed destined to go with him to the grave I was thoroughly surprised when he eventually opened up. I asked him why he came around and his reply was the mangled proverb. The gist, however, was straight and true, and profoundly simple: you get up from the place where you fall. Nana korobi, ya oki. Fall seven times - rise eight. The Chinese have a proverb that makes essentially the same point: Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up. Here’s the sentiment told another way: When you reach the point where you just can’t give any more of your time or effort, stand very still. Then take one more step. (thanks, elsah cort).
2009-08-27
Woody Allen
Eighty percent of success is showing up.
I first heard this quote from my brother-- thanks, apg.
Editorial: Every year towards the end of summer students ask me for the best advice I have for success in college, and I offer this quote. I also share these words with my friends, and in my own life I see their veracity everywhere. I’m curious why Woody picked '80', although his reason might be as simple as Douglas Adams’s explanation for why he offered '42' as the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. Alternatively Woody probably knows about the Pareto Principle (or the 80-20 Rule). Whatever the reason, I increasingly feel that showing up just might be the second truism I can trust on a regular basis; the first is here.
I first heard this quote from my brother-- thanks, apg.
Editorial: Every year towards the end of summer students ask me for the best advice I have for success in college, and I offer this quote. I also share these words with my friends, and in my own life I see their veracity everywhere. I’m curious why Woody picked '80', although his reason might be as simple as Douglas Adams’s explanation for why he offered '42' as the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. Alternatively Woody probably knows about the Pareto Principle (or the 80-20 Rule). Whatever the reason, I increasingly feel that showing up just might be the second truism I can trust on a regular basis; the first is here.
2009-08-19
Kay Ryan
Fool's Errand
by Kay Ryan
A thing
cannot be
delivered
enough times:
this is the
rule of dogs
for whom there
are no fool’s
errands. To
loop out and
come back is
good all alone.
It’s gravy to
carry a ball
or a bone.
Appears in The New Yorker, August 10&17, 2009
Editorial: This poem evokes a childhood memory steeped in carefreeness. It goes something like this. My family had a trampoline growing up that I would jump on endlessly with my siblings, friends and neighbors. We called it the tramp. We also had a much-loved dog named Mimi who learned how to poke her head through the springs on the edge of the tramp while standing on her hind legs. She was a Springer Spaniel and she did this trick in order to spit out her tennis ball at our bouncing feet. One of us would then dive for the ball, jump as high as we could on the tramp, and hurl the ball forever in whatever direction. Sometimes we would do that trick when you fake a throw one way and then hurl it the other while Mimi had her head turned. It didn’t matter to Mimi. She eventually always found the ball. We could throw it into the deepest bush, over the house, over the fence, over the fence and across the street, over the fence across the street and over the next fence, and on and on. (Why we led her across the busy street with our throws I’ll never know.) It occurs to me now reading Ryan’s poem that while it took Mimi all of ten seconds to execute her trick of depositing the ball through the springs on the tramp, it might have taken her ten or twenty minutes to find her ball buried deep in a hedge far away. I always imagined that she was seeking our approval by proudly retrieving the ball. But this poem gives me pause and makes me wonder whether Mimi considered us jumpers an inconvenient necessity. Maybe all we were to her was a means to looping out, and that her pride and joy was not the delivery, but the search and discovery.
by Kay Ryan
A thing
cannot be
delivered
enough times:
this is the
rule of dogs
for whom there
are no fool’s
errands. To
loop out and
come back is
good all alone.
It’s gravy to
carry a ball
or a bone.
Appears in The New Yorker, August 10&17, 2009
Editorial: This poem evokes a childhood memory steeped in carefreeness. It goes something like this. My family had a trampoline growing up that I would jump on endlessly with my siblings, friends and neighbors. We called it the tramp. We also had a much-loved dog named Mimi who learned how to poke her head through the springs on the edge of the tramp while standing on her hind legs. She was a Springer Spaniel and she did this trick in order to spit out her tennis ball at our bouncing feet. One of us would then dive for the ball, jump as high as we could on the tramp, and hurl the ball forever in whatever direction. Sometimes we would do that trick when you fake a throw one way and then hurl it the other while Mimi had her head turned. It didn’t matter to Mimi. She eventually always found the ball. We could throw it into the deepest bush, over the house, over the fence, over the fence and across the street, over the fence across the street and over the next fence, and on and on. (Why we led her across the busy street with our throws I’ll never know.) It occurs to me now reading Ryan’s poem that while it took Mimi all of ten seconds to execute her trick of depositing the ball through the springs on the tramp, it might have taken her ten or twenty minutes to find her ball buried deep in a hedge far away. I always imagined that she was seeking our approval by proudly retrieving the ball. But this poem gives me pause and makes me wonder whether Mimi considered us jumpers an inconvenient necessity. Maybe all we were to her was a means to looping out, and that her pride and joy was not the delivery, but the search and discovery.
2009-08-18
Naguib Mahfouz
The darkness was thicker now and he could see nothing at all, not even the outlines of the tombs, as if nothing wished to be seen. He was slipping away into endless depths, not knowing either position, place, or purpose. As hard as he could, he tried to gain control of something, no matter what. To exert one last act of resistance. To capture one last recalcitrant memory. But finally, because he had to succumb, and not caring, he surrendered. Not caring at all now.
The Thief and the Dogs (1961)
Editorial: This passage describes a man’s last living moments. It strikes me as profound and nearly perfect. It also reminds me of the fitful, dreamless sleep that afflicts me when I am sick. But how could the living Mahfouz know about death? And why would it resonate with me, undead as I am? It seems good literature does this— it brings alien experiences, emotions and moments to unsuspecting readers.
The Thief and the Dogs (1961)
Editorial: This passage describes a man’s last living moments. It strikes me as profound and nearly perfect. It also reminds me of the fitful, dreamless sleep that afflicts me when I am sick. But how could the living Mahfouz know about death? And why would it resonate with me, undead as I am? It seems good literature does this— it brings alien experiences, emotions and moments to unsuspecting readers.
2009-08-15
Naguib Mahfouz
It occurred to him that habit is the root of laziness, boredom, and death, that habit had been responsible for his sufferings, the treachery, the ingratitude, and the waste of his life's hard toil.
The Thief and the Dogs (1961)
The Thief and the Dogs (1961)
Joao Padua
Marta Mamani, an Aymara indigenous woman, hits a drive during her work break at La Paz Golf Club on November 26, 2008. Photo by Joao Padua (AFP/Getty Images). Source:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/02/bolivia_and_its_new_constituti.html
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/02/bolivia_and_its_new_constituti.html
2009-08-05
Anton Chekhov
If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there.
In 1889, Ilia Gurliand noted these words from a conversation with Chekhov (see Donald Rayfield, Anton Chekhov: A Life, New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997, p.203). Chekhov repeated this point a number of times.
In 1889, Ilia Gurliand noted these words from a conversation with Chekhov (see Donald Rayfield, Anton Chekhov: A Life, New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997, p.203). Chekhov repeated this point a number of times.
2009-08-01
Charles Simic
The Toad
by Charles Simic
[…]
God never made a day as beautiful as today,
A neighbor was saying.
I sat in the shade after she left
Mulling that one over,
When a toad hopped out of the grass
And finding me harmless,
Hopped over my foot on his way to the pond.
by Charles Simic
[…]
God never made a day as beautiful as today,
A neighbor was saying.
I sat in the shade after she left
Mulling that one over,
When a toad hopped out of the grass
And finding me harmless,
Hopped over my foot on his way to the pond.
Sherman Alexie
Survivorman
by Sherman Alexie
Here’s a fact: Some people want to live more
Than others do. Some can withstand any horror
While others will easily surrender
To thirst, hunger, and extremes of weather.
In Utah, one man carried another
Man on his back like a conjoined brother
And crossed twenty-five miles of desert
To safety. Can you imagine the hurt?
Do you think you could be that good and strong?
Yes, yes, you think, but you’re probably wrong.
Appears in the New Yorker, June 8, 2009
by Sherman Alexie
Here’s a fact: Some people want to live more
Than others do. Some can withstand any horror
While others will easily surrender
To thirst, hunger, and extremes of weather.
In Utah, one man carried another
Man on his back like a conjoined brother
And crossed twenty-five miles of desert
To safety. Can you imagine the hurt?
Do you think you could be that good and strong?
Yes, yes, you think, but you’re probably wrong.
Appears in the New Yorker, June 8, 2009
2009-07-29
Sort Sol
There is a phenomenon in Denmark known as Sort Sol (Black Sun) in which vast numbers of European Starlings gather and swarm creating black shapes against the sky just before evening twilight. These sixteen pictures were taken over the course of one hour during an evening in April 2006 (image created by Bjarne Winkler).
http://epod.typepad.com/blog/2006/06/black-sun-in-denmark.html
UPDATE: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=970_1257546785&p=1
http://epod.typepad.com/blog/2006/06/black-sun-in-denmark.html
UPDATE: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=970_1257546785&p=1
2009-07-20
Milan Kundera
And you should not be astonished or incensed, for this is the most obvious thing in the world: man is separated from the past (even from the past only a few seconds old) by two forces that go instantly to work and cooperate: the force of forgetting (which erases) and the force of memory (which transforms).
It is the most obvious thing, but it is hard to accept, for when one thinks it all the way through, what becomes of all the testimonies that historiography relies on? What becomes of our certainties about the past, and what becomes of History itself, to which we refer every day in good faith, naively, spontaneously? Beyond the slender margin of the incontestable (there is no doubt that Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo), stretches an infinite realm: the realm of the approximate, the invented, the deformed, the simplistic, the exaggerated, the misconstrued, an infinite realm of nontruths that copulate, multiply like rats, and become immortal.
The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts (2005), "The Novel, Memory, Forgetting"
It is the most obvious thing, but it is hard to accept, for when one thinks it all the way through, what becomes of all the testimonies that historiography relies on? What becomes of our certainties about the past, and what becomes of History itself, to which we refer every day in good faith, naively, spontaneously? Beyond the slender margin of the incontestable (there is no doubt that Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo), stretches an infinite realm: the realm of the approximate, the invented, the deformed, the simplistic, the exaggerated, the misconstrued, an infinite realm of nontruths that copulate, multiply like rats, and become immortal.
The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts (2005), "The Novel, Memory, Forgetting"
Milan Kundera
Aesthetic concepts only began to interest me when I first perceived their existential roots, when I came to understand them as existential concepts: people simple or refined, intelligent or stupid, are regularly faced in life with the beautiful, the ugly, the sublime, the comical, the tragic, the lyrical, the dramatic, with action, peripeteia, catharsis, or, to speak of less philosophical concepts, with agelasty or kitsch or vulgarity; all these concepts are tracks leading to various aspects of existence that are inaccessible by any other means.
The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts (2005), "Aesthetics and Existence"
The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts (2005), "Aesthetics and Existence"
2009-07-14
2009-07-13
Denis Diderot
Everything changes, everything passes. Only the totality remains.
Le Rêve de d’Alembert (D’Alembert’s Dream), 1769
Le Rêve de d’Alembert (D’Alembert’s Dream), 1769
Jonathan Freedland
- Above all, it serves as a case study for the way contemporary empire operates, exploding the myth that the United States differs from its British, Spanish, and Roman predecessors by eschewing both the brute conquest of land and the dispossession of those unfortunate enough to get in the way. [...]
- In Vine's persuasive telling, it is from the expansionist instincts of the military services, rather than the conscious decisions of civilian policymakers, that the imperialist project draws much of its energy. It is the military brass's reflexive empire-building that builds an empire. [...]
- Vine's evidence casts a fresh light on the ongoing debate over whether or not the US can be said to constitute an empire and, if so, how it might compare with its historical predecessors. It had previously been fashionable to regard the US empire as exceptional, a break from the past in that its influence is almost entirely indirect and economic, since it refuses to join the Romans or British in ruling over colonies directly. [...]
- Thanks to the work of scholars such as Chalmers Johnson and now Vine, we can see the weakness in that argument. The latter estimates that there are one thousand US military bases and installations "on the sovereign land of other nations." This "base world," as Johnson calls it, is presented benignly, as the product of voluntary, bilateral pacts between the US and those states that agree for their land to be occupied. But often this presentation is, in the idiom of that British official, a "fiction." Behind the veneer can lie the crude expropriation of land and the callous dispossession of some of the world's weakest people. That is how it used to be in the old days of empire, whether under Rome or Queen Victoria. And that's how it was in the Chagos Islands not much more than a generation ago. [...]
'A Black and Disgraceful Site', by Jonathan Freedland
A review of David Vine's 'Island of Shame: The Secret History of the US Military Base on Diego Garcia' (2009)
2009-07-12
Milan Kundera
The everyday. It is not merely ennui, pointlessness, repetition, triviality; it is beauty as well; for instance, the magical charm of atmospheres, a thing everyone has felt in his own life: a strain of music heard faintly from the next apartment; the wind rattling the windowpane; the monotonous voice of a professor that a lovesick schoolgirl hears without registering; these trivial circumstances stamp some personal event with an inimitable singularity that dates it and makes it unforgettable.
The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts (2005), "The Consciousness of Continuity"
The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts (2005), "The Consciousness of Continuity"
2009-06-30
V. S. Naipaul
The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.
A Bend in the River (1979)
A Bend in the River (1979)
2009-06-14
Gabriel García Márquez
Let no one be deceived, no, thinking that what he awaits will last longer than what he has seen.
Memories of My Melancholy Whore (2006)
Memories of My Melancholy Whore (2006)
2009-06-12
Robert Burns
To A Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest, with The Plough (1785)
by Robert Burns
Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murd'ring pattle!
I'm truly sorry man's dominion,
Has broken nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An' fellow-mortal!
I doubt na, whiles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
'S a sma' request;
I'll get a blessin wi' the lave,
An' never miss't!
Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!
It's silly wa's the win's are strewin!
An' naething, now, to big a new ane,
O' foggage green!
An' bleak December's winds ensuin,
Baith snell an' keen!
Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,
An' weary winter comin fast,
An' cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell-
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro' thy cell.
That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble!
Now thou's turn'd out, for a' thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter's sleety dribble,
An' cranreuch cauld!
But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men
Gang aft agley,
An'lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!
Still thou art blest, compar'd wi' me
The present only toucheth thee:
But, Och! I backward cast my e'e.
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!
by Robert Burns
Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murd'ring pattle!
I'm truly sorry man's dominion,
Has broken nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An' fellow-mortal!
I doubt na, whiles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
'S a sma' request;
I'll get a blessin wi' the lave,
An' never miss't!
Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!
It's silly wa's the win's are strewin!
An' naething, now, to big a new ane,
O' foggage green!
An' bleak December's winds ensuin,
Baith snell an' keen!
Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,
An' weary winter comin fast,
An' cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell-
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro' thy cell.
That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble!
Now thou's turn'd out, for a' thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter's sleety dribble,
An' cranreuch cauld!
But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men
Gang aft agley,
An'lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!
Still thou art blest, compar'd wi' me
The present only toucheth thee:
But, Och! I backward cast my e'e.
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!
2009-06-07
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio
The Martyrdom of Saint Peter (1600-1601)
Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome, Italy
oil on canvas
Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome, Italy
oil on canvas
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