… Image ◊ Resources ◊ Tributes to D.G. Myers.
Much thanks to Greg Wolfe and Patrick Kurp.
Friday, October 31, 2014
A thought for today …
Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity, it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.
— John Keats, born on this date in 1795
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Welcome to Purgatory …
… When Freud Met God — Philosophy and Life. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It has long been my settled view that the world and life offer glimpses of Paradise, may slip into Hell from time to time, but are mostly a setting for Purgatory. Our lot is prayer and penitence.
It has long been my settled view that the world and life offer glimpses of Paradise, may slip into Hell from time to time, but are mostly a setting for Purgatory. Our lot is prayer and penitence.
An outstanding article …
… I Did Not Lose My Mind (May 2014) — Lion's Roar.
This is very well observed, beautifully written, and soundly reasoned. I think it will be of help to many.
This is very well observed, beautifully written, and soundly reasoned. I think it will be of help to many.
FYI …
MAKING POEMS THAT LAST – Winter 2014
A POETRY WORKSHOP WITH LEONARD GONTAREK
While there’s no guarantee you’ll become the next Robert Frost, with the guidance of award-winning, prolific poet Leonard Gontarek, it’s at least a possibility. Encouraging students to explore as many avenues as possible and remove themselves from their work, he’ll help you find—then strengthen—your style and voice.
Philadelphia Weekly, Nicole Finkbiner
Reserve a place in the class via: gontarek9@earthlink.net
The workshop will include discussions of contemporary and international
poetry, translation, the students’ poetry, and the realities of publishing poetry.
Narrative, persona, political, homage, and confessional poetry will be
covered with a focus on what makes a poet’s voice original and their own.
Specific direction and assignments will be given, with attention
to the basic elements and forms of poetry.
Through invention students will build more accurate and textured work.
The workshop will be presented in seven 2-hour sessions,
Saturdays, 11 – 1:00 PM: November 1, 8, 15, 22, (no class Thanksgiving weekend),
December 6, 13, 20.
Location: 4221 Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia.
The cost is 161 dollars for 7 sessions.
Please contact Leonard Gontarek with interest: gontarek9@earthlink.net,
215.808.9507 – Independent workshops and manuscript editing available.
A POETRY WORKSHOP WITH LEONARD GONTAREK
While there’s no guarantee you’ll become the next Robert Frost, with the guidance of award-winning, prolific poet Leonard Gontarek, it’s at least a possibility. Encouraging students to explore as many avenues as possible and remove themselves from their work, he’ll help you find—then strengthen—your style and voice.
Philadelphia Weekly, Nicole Finkbiner
Reserve a place in the class via: gontarek9@earthlink.net
The workshop will include discussions of contemporary and international
poetry, translation, the students’ poetry, and the realities of publishing poetry.
Narrative, persona, political, homage, and confessional poetry will be
covered with a focus on what makes a poet’s voice original and their own.
Specific direction and assignments will be given, with attention
to the basic elements and forms of poetry.
Through invention students will build more accurate and textured work.
The workshop will be presented in seven 2-hour sessions,
Saturdays, 11 – 1:00 PM: November 1, 8, 15, 22, (no class Thanksgiving weekend),
December 6, 13, 20.
Location: 4221 Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia.
The cost is 161 dollars for 7 sessions.
Please contact Leonard Gontarek with interest: gontarek9@earthlink.net,
215.808.9507 – Independent workshops and manuscript editing available.
Moments in and moments out …
… In Praise of Spacing Out -- Science of Us. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I am very adept at blocking out distractions and focusing on what I'm doing. Ask my wife. But I am equally good at letting my mind wander where it will. I think of this as a kind of alternating current of consciousness.
The baby and the bath water …
… Serendipity in the Stacks: A Case against Bookless Libraries. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A thought for today …
Serious-minded people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.
— Paul Valery, born on this date in 1871
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Music and life …
… Anecdotal Evidence: `Memory Cedes Its Place to Analogy'. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I remember with disturbing clarity the soundtrack of my first weeks as a college freshman in the fall of 1970. My roommate and I listened to Blonde on Blonde, Miles Davis’ Greatest Hits and Bitch’s Brew, Joe Cocker’s cover of “Cry Me a River,” George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, The Band’s Music from Big Pink and The Band, Jefferson Starship’s Blows Against the Empire, Smetana’s Má Vlast, Leoš Janáček’s “Kreutzer Sonata,” Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, and the inevitable Beatles, Stones, Cream, Hendrix, among other things. By being eclectic, we were being conventional for the time.
I think that sort of eclecticism is not encountered much these days.
Good God …
… TRENDING: More college students support post-birth abortion.
We're talking infanticide here. Talk about a culture of death.
We're talking infanticide here. Talk about a culture of death.
R.I.P. …
… Galway Kinnell, Poet Who Followed His Own Path, Dies at 87 — NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Laudator Temporis Acti: Degrees of Comparison …
… Laudator Temporis Acti: Degrees of Comparison. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I don't know if there are any scholars like Kittredge anymore. His chapter on "The Pardoner's Tale" in Chaucer and His Poetry is interpretive magic.
I don't know if there are any scholars like Kittredge anymore. His chapter on "The Pardoner's Tale" in Chaucer and His Poetry is interpretive magic.
Birth-week brothers …
… John Berryman Joins Dylan Thomas in Life and Death: A Double Centenary | Town Topics. (Hat tip, Virginia Kerr.)
My thoughts on these two October poets might have taken me somewhere more cheerful than St. Vincent’s had I not been preoccupied with the large building on Witherspoon Street currently being relieved of its outer layer prior to death by demolition.Beautiful sentence, that.
Diamond jubilee …
… 75 Years Of 'Colossal Poets' And Live Literature At NYC's 92nd Street Y : NPR. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A thought for today …
There is no better way of exercising the imagination than the study of law. No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets the truth.
— Jean Giraudoux, born on this date in1882
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Hear, hear …
… Richard Dawkins is wrong: Religion is not inherently violent - Salon.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A very nice review.
A very nice review.
Haiku …
Forget about war.
Do consider the meanness
Daily in your heart.
Note: I changed the opening line because it did not convey what I wanted it to. I had been thinking of news reports of murders in the city. As I read it later, it seemed to suggest that I was thinking about murder, something that is never on my mind except when I read about it.
In case you wondered …
… The University Bookman: Why the Exorcist Endures. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Exorcist author William Peter Blatty based his 1971 book on a real case of demonic possession that occurred in Maryland in the 1940s. Yet the most important part of the novel was left out of the film. This section was so important to the story that it caused a rift between Blatty and director William Friedkin. Near the end of the book version, Father Lankester Merrin, an older priest, is explaining evil to Father Damien Karras, a young Georgetown Jesuit. The demon’s target, Fr. Merrin says, is not the innocent girl he takes over. The target “is us.” He continues: “I think the point is to make us despair, to reject our own humanity, Damien, to see ourselves as ultimately bestial; as ultimately vile and putrescent; without dignity; unworthy.” Fr. Merrin then explains that the devil is not so much in wars or on great geopolitical dramas, but in the small, quotidian cruelties: “in the senseless, petty snipes; the misunderstandings; the cruel and cutting word that leaps unbidden to the tongue between friends, between lovers.” Enough of these, he says, and “we don’t need Satan to manage our wars.”
Comparison and contrast …
… About Last Night | Answer came there none. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… My own feeling, for what it’s worth, is that Crimes and Misdemeanors is too reductively explicit to support the weight of its parable-like moralizing, whereas Foote is content to let the viewer come to his own conclusions about the ambiguous last scene of Tender Mercies, which makes no assertions of any kind. Not so Allen’s film, whose last scene leaves us in no possible doubt (save in the minds of interpretation-happy academics) of what he takes to be its precise meaning, which he has since spelled out to interviewers on numerous occasions.
A thought for today …
There are no poetic ideas; only poetic utterances.
— Evelyn Waugh, born on this date in 1903
Now presenting...
If you haven’t been paying attention—if Beck has slipped off your radar—he’s said and done a few things over the last year that might surprise you. He said liberals were right about the Iraq war, that we never should have gone in. He said he thinks Hillary Clinton will be the next president. He said he supports gay marriage—or, more specifically, that he doesn’t believe the government should have a say in anyone’s marriage, one way or the other. And this summer, he took truckloads of food and toys to immigrant children who had crossed the border into South Texas.
Monday, October 27, 2014
I don't think so …
… Are You An Illusion? - Mary Midgley book review - Philosophy and Life. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It's all about us …
… The truth about evil | John Gray | News | The Guardian. (hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Western intervention in the Middle East has been guided by a view of the world that itself has some of the functions of religion. There is no factual basis for thinking that something like the democratic nation-state provides a model on which the region could be remade. States of this kind emerged in modern Europe, after much bloodshed, but their future is far from assured and they are not the goal or end-point of modern political development. From an empirical viewpoint, any endpoint can only be an act of faith. All that can be observed is a succession of political experiments whose outcomes are highly contingent. Launched in circumstances in which states constructed under the aegis of western colonialism have broken down under the impact of more recent western intervention, the gruesome tyranny established by Isis will go down in history as one of these experiments.
The beat goes on …
… Rhymed Blank Verse: Thomas Hood | The Era of Casual Fridays. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A thought for today …
As for death one gets used to it, even if it's only other people's death you get used to.
— Enid Bagnold, born on this date in 1889
Sunday, October 26, 2014
A mind on vacation …
… La Bocca della Verità: The Grey Lady Grows Senile. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
…the theories of Copernicus and Darwin relied entirely on things that their brains were mistakenly concluding that they were observing. And all of the neuroscience that Graziano claims to be drawing on to reach his conclusions? All of that was developed by neuroscientists based upon things their brains were tricking them into thinking they were looking at. In fact, the very idea that we have a brain is based upon the mistaken idea that when we cut open a human head, we actually see a brain in there, since, according to Graziano, we are mistaken about having been conscious of seeing anything at all.
A thought for today …
Humility does not mean thinking less of yourself than of other people, nor does it mean having a low opinion of your own gifts. It means freedom from thinking about yourself one way or the other at all.
— William Temple, who died on this date in 1944
A different sort of spin …
… Revertigo: An Off-Kilter Memoir | Center for Literary Publishing. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Skloot knows whirling: in 2009 he had a bout of extreme vertigo that lasted for 138 days. Imagine such disorienting dizziness that to stand upright is almost impossible; then add nonstop severe nausea, and last, try them simultaneously for four months. This ordeal alone earns our attention to Skloot’s life story, but using his poet’s instincts and his experience as memoirist and novelist, he weaves a more complex tale—or to put it properly, tales. Vertigo is omnipresent throughout the book in both its physical and psychological forms, not strictly as a condition, but as a thematic link between fourteen masterfully written essays.
Good at a dirty game …
… How Lincoln Played the Press by Garry Wills | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Every bit of that information was blatantly biased in ways that would make today’s Fox News blush. Editors ran their own candidates—in fact they ran for office themselves, and often continued in their post at the paper while holding office. Politicians, knowing this, cultivated their own party’s papers, both the owners and the editors, shared staff with them, released news to them early or exclusively to keep them loyal, rewarded them with state or federal appointments when they won.Ever turn on MSNBC, Garry? Fox actually does have news shows, as opposed to opinion shows. I think Bret Baier's show is as good for news as any on the tube.
Saturday, October 25, 2014
Ideology as fiction …
… Irving Howe, storyteller of ideas | TLS. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
So, he remained "as committed a socialist in the 1980s as he was in the 30s," but "does not explain the economics of socialism." So what the hell was he committed to?
So, he remained "as committed a socialist in the 1980s as he was in the 30s," but "does not explain the economics of socialism." So what the hell was he committed to?
Angels without borders...
...What Does Médecins Sans Frontières Teach Its Doctors?
That the outbreak is still out of control wasn’t going to keep Portnoy away. It was what finally convinced him—and his wife—that he had to go. “West Africa is where the most help is needed,” he said, “and it’s also the place it must be stopped.”
Plenty of nothing …
… H.P. Lovecraft's Philosophy of Horror | New Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I could never get into Lovecraft. His tales struck me as simply revolting.
I could never get into Lovecraft. His tales struck me as simply revolting.
A thought for today …
He who is infatuated with 'Man' leaves persons out of account so far as that infatuation extends, and floats in an ideal, sacred interest. Man, you see, is not a person, but an ideal, a spook.
— Max Stirner, born on this date in 1806
Friday, October 24, 2014
I guess it depends …
… Art of Darkness - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… the more we read about Jobs publicly humiliating colleagues and refusing to acknowledge responsibility for the birth of his first child, the more we see that his genius could seem inextricable from his indifference to social norms.There is no reason to assume any necessary connection between genius and personality. If more geniuses than not are shits rather than saints, well, the same is probably true of the human race as a whole.
And the winners are …
… First Kirkus Prizes go to Roz Chast, Lily King and Kate Samworth - LA Times. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Who knew?
… Love Is the Answer to Empire | The American Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
If I can paraphrase a D.C.-area punk rock band of 30-plus years ago, I used to work for my Senatron and I lived in Washingtron. (The senator was Pat Moynihan, who late in life called for the withdrawal of the U.S. from NATO, the reining in of the CIA, and the transfer of many federal government programs to the states. In today’s Senate he’d be considered a wild-eyed radical—though I think he might find an ally across the aisle in Rand Paul.)Guess he didn't call for withdrawal from the UN because he used to be our ambassador to it. But I agree about transferring stuff back the states and reining in the CIA. That said, you need something more than grouchy nostalgia as a basis for political action.
Pushback …
… Barely Believable Bias |� ACTA.
The idea that bullying of this sort is in any way educational is a pernicious one. It discourages students with minority viewpoints from voicing their opinions and encourages professors to use class time for political grandstanding at the expense of time spent actually teaching.
Q&A …
… Playwright Tom Stoppard’s Surprisingly Relaxed Method - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
If you work everything out in advance, you’re forcing the play to follow what you’ve worked out, and you will inevitably get to a point where you’re cheating on the psychology of the character. If you let the plot be determined by what you feel is in the character’s mind at that point, it may not turn out to be a very good play, but at least it will be a play where people are behaving in a kind of truthful way.
Hmm …,
… Closing Our Browsers - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Some of my happiest memories are of browsing in bookstores. But I haven't done much of that in years. The only big one in Center City Philadelphia is Barnes & Noble on Rittenhouse Square, and I don't find it pleasant to browse there. There is, of course, Joseph Fox Books, but I don't get up that way too often these days. On the other hand, browsing online a few weeks ago, I discovered a book called What Can You Say About God (Except "God"), by William A. Luijpen, who wrote Existential Phenomenology, which was one of my metaphysics texts in college. It is the best book on God that I have ever read. It is out of print and I doubt I would have found it in any bookstore.
RIP …
… Mystery writer Harold Adams dies at age 91 in Eden Prairie - TwinCities.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A thought for today …
The imagination, which synergizes intellect, emotion and instinct, is the perceptive organ through which it is possible, though not inevitable, to experience God.
— Denise Levertov, born on this date in 1923
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Happy birthday …
… to Ned Rorem, another of the symphonists I keep going on about. Note in particular the ravishing melody toward the end of the final movement.
War and remembrance …
… A Science-Fiction Classic Still Smolders - The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Beyond being a repository for his fears about the bomb, “A Canticle for Leibowitz” was a means for Miller to work through the trauma and guilt that haunted him from his wartime experiences, especially the bombing of the abbey at Monte Cassino. By his own admission, the Miller did not become fully aware of the driving force behind his novel until he was working on its third part. “I was writing the first version of the scene where Zerchi lies half buried in the rubble,” Miller recalled. “Then a light bulb came on over my head: ‘Good God, is this the abbey at Monte Cassino? . . . What have I been writing?’”
Until now …
… Unapologetic • Can't Stop. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Actually, I think one can know God as a presence. That, of course, is not the same as proving that He exists.
Actually, I think one can know God as a presence. That, of course, is not the same as proving that He exists.
The way things used to be …
… Mining newspapers for poetry — Book Patrol: A Haven for Book Culture. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A thought for today …
Art means to dare — and to have been right.
— Ned Rorem, born on this date in 1923
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
Hmm …
… How can we make the subject matter of philosophy of religion more diverse? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Theism, in a generic, omni-property sort of way, is one position that philosophers of religion commonly defend. The other is scientific naturalism. These seem to be the only games in town ….Well, what other games would there be? Polytheism? That always has a supreme God. The world and life are understood as either mechanical or personal, random or purposeful.
Forgotten no more …
… Joseph Lee Scotland's Forgotten Poet remembered in new book | STV Dundee | Dundee. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
A thought for today …
There was a time when young people respected learning and literature and now they don't.
— Doris Lessing, born on this date in 1919
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Anniversary …
Malcolm Arnold, one of the great 20th -century symphonists I mentioned recently, was born on this date in 1921. This is the first movement of his second symphony. The other movements can be linked to easily.
"...maker of all things visible and invisible..."
I fell over, as I walked the dogs this morning, while saying
the Nicene Creed, fell over right over off the path in the picture, because I realized I was in the middle
of this creation, of the all things visible and invisible, the trees and sun
and clouds and grasses, the birds that were now beginning to wake and chirp,
and the noise of the wind too, that blew through the trees and branches and
leaves, making them move and dance, and the dogs and the dirt, the things in
the dirt and holding the dirt together, and every other thing too, and me, and
I just fell over, my legs wouldn’t hold me up, because they had gotten too weak
to hold me up in the face of this overwhelming Power.
“Yes I did,” I heard the affirmation, and I sat a bit, took
this picture and gathered myself and got up, for I had been knocked flat by the
Glory of the Lord.
I then walked more, down the path and realized the bigger
part of this, the hard part, is that I was created too for this moment
and now to spread the Good News to you.
The difficulties of life-writing …
… The TLS blog: The once and future biographer. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
No mere invisible hand …
… Book Review: ‘How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life’ by Russ Roberts - WSJ - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A thought for today …
Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge, born on this date in 1772
Monday, October 20, 2014
Upgrade …
… The Elegant Variation: TEV 2.0 - Launch of the newsletter edition. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I just subscribed.
I just subscribed.
Chandler Town …
… A Map of Raymond Chandler’s Fictional LA in Real-Life LA | Electric Literature. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Back to basics …
…Conference speakers say the liberal arts must return to a purer form to survive @insidehighered.
Once you grasp the distinction between training, which is instrumental — how to do something — and education, which is formative — how to become someone — the problem becomes much clearer.
Once you grasp the distinction between training, which is instrumental — how to do something — and education, which is formative — how to become someone — the problem becomes much clearer.
What is your reason for reading …,
… beyond eastrod: Get off your ass! Either burn those books or read those books. What a choice!
A friend of mine, a psychiatrist, once told me it was a bad idea to ask a patient why he had done something or said something. Much better to ask what his reason was for doing or saying something.
Asking why gave him an opening to explain matters in terms of factors outside his control. His reason could only be his own.
I've been reading for so long that the practice has simply become second nature. But I got into it because I enjoyed it and because I enjoyed it I became good at it. It is, after all, a co-creative act. The reader actualizes the potency of the text (to put it Thomistically). This is called fun. It can also be enlightening, because it forces you to look at and think about life in a more focused and intense manner than ordinarily. This, in turn, over time enriches one's being. The knower and the known are one, as St. Thomas noted. The more you know, the more you are. Reading is one of the principal ways of enriching the soul. If you have not read, say, The Magic Mountain, your life is to that extent impoverished. The same is true if you have never really looked at a Botticelli or listened to Bach's B-minor Mass. Living is not the same as making one.
A thought for today …
Only divine love bestows the keys of knowledge.
— Arthur Rimbaud, born on this date in 1854
Old man and river …
… Bryan Appleyard — Hearing the Underground River. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I have heard Glass's music live only once, a performance of one of his piano concertos, presumably the first. It was entertaining, but not terribly memorable. Arvo Pärt and John Tavener I rather like. Morten Lauridsen is quite good.
I have heard Glass's music live only once, a performance of one of his piano concertos, presumably the first. It was entertaining, but not terribly memorable. Arvo Pärt and John Tavener I rather like. Morten Lauridsen is quite good.
Sunday, October 19, 2014
A reminder …
THE GREEN LINE CAFE
READING & INTERVIEW SERIES
PRESENTS:
CHARLOTTE BOULAY
author of Foxes on the Trampoline
&
YOLANDA WISHER
author of Monk Eats an Afro
Reading & Interview
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 7 PM
HOSTED BY
LEONARD GONTAREK & LILLIAN DUNN
THE GREEN LINE CAFE IS LOCATED
AT 45TH & LOCUST STREETS
(Please note the address, there are
other Green Line Café locations.)
greenlinecafe.com
This Event Is Free
Yolanda Wisher was born in the Germantown section of Philadelphia and raised in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, where she was named the first poet laureate at age 23. A Cave Canem graduate, she received an M.A. in Creative Writing/English from Temple University. Wisher co-edited the international anthology Peace is a Haiku Song with Sonia Sanchez in 2013. In 2014, she was named a Founding Cultural Agent for the US Department of Arts and Culture (USDAC). Her first book of poems, Monk Eats an Afro , was published this year by Hanging Loose Press. She lives in Germantown with her husband Mark Palacio, a doublebassist, and her son Thelonious.
Charlotte Boulay grew up in the Boston area and attended St. Lawrence University. She earned her MFA from the University of Michigan, where she taught composition and creative writing for five years. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Slate, The Boston Review, and Crazyhorse, among other journals. Foxes on the Trampoline is her first book, and was published in April 2014 by Ecco Press/HarperCollins. She lives with her husband in Philadelphia.
READING & INTERVIEW SERIES
PRESENTS:
CHARLOTTE BOULAY
author of Foxes on the Trampoline
&
YOLANDA WISHER
author of Monk Eats an Afro
Reading & Interview
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 7 PM
HOSTED BY
LEONARD GONTAREK & LILLIAN DUNN
THE GREEN LINE CAFE IS LOCATED
AT 45TH & LOCUST STREETS
(Please note the address, there are
other Green Line Café locations.)
greenlinecafe.com
This Event Is Free
Yolanda Wisher was born in the Germantown section of Philadelphia and raised in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, where she was named the first poet laureate at age 23. A Cave Canem graduate, she received an M.A. in Creative Writing/English from Temple University. Wisher co-edited the international anthology Peace is a Haiku Song with Sonia Sanchez in 2013. In 2014, she was named a Founding Cultural Agent for the US Department of Arts and Culture (USDAC). Her first book of poems, Monk Eats an Afro , was published this year by Hanging Loose Press. She lives in Germantown with her husband Mark Palacio, a doublebassist, and her son Thelonious.
Charlotte Boulay grew up in the Boston area and attended St. Lawrence University. She earned her MFA from the University of Michigan, where she taught composition and creative writing for five years. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Slate, The Boston Review, and Crazyhorse, among other journals. Foxes on the Trampoline is her first book, and was published in April 2014 by Ecco Press/HarperCollins. She lives with her husband in Philadelphia.
Endgame …
… Bryan Appleyard — Clive James: Dying in Art. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
We cannot have been conscious of our birth as we will be — and increasingly are as time passes — of our death. But we cry at birth, just as we may at death.
We cannot have been conscious of our birth as we will be — and increasingly are as time passes — of our death. But we cry at birth, just as we may at death.
Memory on its own terms …
… Speaking of Memory: Nabokov’s Folded Fabric | The Los Angeles Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This is a deeply skeptical exploration of our attempts, in a spinning world of evolving phenomena, to define a fixed, concrete Self, to define anything in stasis; that is, it is less concerned with how a character moves through time than how time flows through a singular consciousness. And the book is filled with moments like this — of Nabokov pointing and saying, “Look at that! Can you believe that?” He is not making a case for a post-Einstein universe; he’s discovering that universe with a childlike delight, and inviting the reader to discover it with him.
A thought for today …
One of the functions of intelligence is to take account of the dangers that come from trusting solely to the intelligence.
— Lewis Mumford, born on this date in 1895
Saturday, October 18, 2014
Tracking decline …
… The Bad News About the News | Brookings Institution. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
There was word online this morning about a CBS News operative who had to delete a tweet in which, disagreeing with something Rand Paul had said regarding Ebola, wondered sarcastically when he became a doctor. It did not take long for people to inform her that Paul is an eye surgeon. Obvious the CBS person had not seen the NBC report about Paul spending part the Senate recess this past summer performing free eye surgery in Central America. What the consumer of news should take from this, I think, is that the CBS operative is an ignoramus, just the sort of person the news business does not need and in this day cannot afford.
Of course, there's this:
The antidote for ignorance is curiosity, and curiosity means being in interested in something besides the stuff you already know about.
There was word online this morning about a CBS News operative who had to delete a tweet in which, disagreeing with something Rand Paul had said regarding Ebola, wondered sarcastically when he became a doctor. It did not take long for people to inform her that Paul is an eye surgeon. Obvious the CBS person had not seen the NBC report about Paul spending part the Senate recess this past summer performing free eye surgery in Central America. What the consumer of news should take from this, I think, is that the CBS operative is an ignoramus, just the sort of person the news business does not need and in this day cannot afford.
Of course, there's this:
Only about a third of Americans under 35 look at a newspaper even once a week, and the percentage declines every year. A large portion of today's readers of the few remaining good newspapers are much closer to the grave than to high school. Today's young people skitter around the Internet like ice skaters, exercising their short attention spans by looking for fun and, occasionally, seeking out serious information. Audience taste seems to be changing, with the result that among young people particularly there is a declining appetite for the sort of information packages the great newspapers provided, which included national, foreign and local news, business news, cultural news and criticism, editorials and opinion columns, sports and obituaries, lifestyle features, and science news.So maybe our CBS operative is representative of her generation.
The antidote for ignorance is curiosity, and curiosity means being in interested in something besides the stuff you already know about.
A thought for today …
Some other faculty than the intellect is necessary for the apprehension of reality.
— Henri Bergson, born on this date in 1859
Catching up with Herodotus …
… Father of History | The Weekly Standard. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Temperamentally, literarily, and methodoligically, Herodotus and Thucydides could scarcely have been further apart. Thucydides’ strength was in analysis, Herodotus’ in description. Concision, dazzling formulation, and intellectual penetration were where Thucydides’ power lay, while expansion and sympathy for human difference was Herodotus’ forte. Herodotus appears to have been a man of wider tolerance, with a more generous nature and distinterested outlook than Thucydides. Herodotus’ motive was pure knowledge; Thucydides, meanwhile, wrote under the cloud of having been exiled for 20 years from Athens because of his failure to arrive in time to rescue the Athenian forces at the Battle of Amphipolis early in the Peloponnesian War.I read Herodotus when I was in high school. I still have the volumes downstairs. And I remember him as great company throughout. Maybe that's where I got my lifelong preoccupation with trying to see things just as they are.
Jesus and Vedanta …
… Learning To Be God - Philosophy and Life. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It is certainly true that an authentic religious life centers on prayer and that genuine prayer is a path to discovery, and that what one discovers may prove both surprising and disturbing.
It is certainly true that an authentic religious life centers on prayer and that genuine prayer is a path to discovery, and that what one discovers may prove both surprising and disturbing.
Friday, October 17, 2014
Blogging note …
To celebrate my birthday of a few days ago, Debbie and I are attending an afternoon Philadelphia Orchestra performance of Janáček's Glagolitic Mss, a personal favorite of mine. Then we'll have an early dinners somewhere. So blogging will resume sometime later.
Marking a centenary …
… John Berryman Is Reconsidered in 4 New Books - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The Poe case …
… The Poet Edgar Allan Poe: Alien Angel by Jerome McGann Review | New Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
We demand of our poets, Romantic or not, more than watchmaking—more sublime messiness, more anarchic personality, more moral substance, more matter, than Poe was willing to allow, which is why his verse sounds so bloodless next to Whitman's, so inconsequential next to Dickinson's, and so mechanical next to almost anyone else's. Style for Poe was the almost negligible outcome of over-rationalized composition, and not the organic outcrop of substance. (For a hammered-home contrast, look again at any one of the sonnets of Gerard Manley Hopkins to see how the singing and the song are one.)
When artists dine …
… Michael Dirda reviews ‘The Immortal Evening’ by Stanley Plumly - The Washington Post. (Hat tip, Dave Lull..)
A thought for today …
There are only Epicureans, either crude or refined; Christ was the most refined.
— Georg Büchner, born on this date in 1831
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Franny and Dinky …
As the Power Goes Out, Salinger’s “Franny” Puts the Dinky On the Map | Town Topic. (Hat tip, Virginia Kerr.)
Worrisome indeed …
… Obama administration has secured 526 months of jail time for leakers - Boing Boing.
502 months more than in all of American history.
502 months more than in all of American history.
Stylized demimonde …
… A Portrait of the Artist as a Droll Slacker - The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Where have all the New Yorker's vaunted fact-checkers gone? Henry Yorke spelled his pseudonym Green, not Greene.
Where have all the New Yorker's vaunted fact-checkers gone? Henry Yorke spelled his pseudonym Green, not Greene.
A thought for today …
Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
— Oscar Wilde, born on this date in 1854
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Changing your mind...
"When the facts change I change my mind Sir. What do you do?"
- John Maynard Keynes
Thinking and acting in a different gender is hard. And it isn't because one has to make stuff up ("Let's see, what would a woman do here?") although there is a little bit of that in the beginning. No what is hard is getting rid of the stuff I came with prior to transition, that is, the layers and layers of thought that I imposed on myself to convince myself that I had a male's brain (more of that in a great article from the WSJ here.) The one scientific fact about being a transsexual (which is a cool word in a way, far better than transgender or trans, as far as I am concerned) that seems to be certain, based on over 200 different neuroanatomy studies (see here) is that a female transsexual’s brain is more like a woman's than a man's. So I never really had a male brain, and that makes sense in so many ways looking back on how I tried to fit in, with a male body but a female brain.
And attempts to cope with that situation led to my cognitive layers. We all have them, layers and layers of rules, rationalizations, and other cognitive phenomena, especially as we get older. They influence our behavior and thoughts, and I think that those layers are one of the things Christ told us to get rid of: "Unless you be as a child..." And sometimes we can and do, and move ahead happy with our simpler ways of thinking. But not often and it has always amazed me how many layers there are; and how we may never really get rid of them. For example, someone who is constantly late may have any number of reasons for doing so, some of them a reaction to authority ("I'm not going to live by their clock!") and of course others.
What happened in my life was like that. I had to get rid of layers of aggression, imposed on myself because the world constantly frustrated me, because I was reacting the “Wrong” way, as a chick trying to be a guy, but I don’t know that, just that I couldn’t get what I wanted, what others seemed to have. So I resorted to aggression; beating people up to get what I wanted. I became a football player, and then a lawyer, skilled in meeting the battle.
But the problem was when I realized who I was (more on that in a previous post here), I couldn’t use any of that, any of those layers I had built up over almost 50 years. And those layers weren’t only bad. They sustained me and allowed me to live, because even though I covered up my true nature, I needed some coping mechanism, and that is what these layers were: helping me cope with a condition that I may have dimly known I had. So I had to, as well, try to learn new skills to replace the old; if the old would have me yelling at people to get my way, the new had me not knowing what to do to get my way.
And slowly, very slowly, the answer has come and it is a surprising one because, as I said at the beginning, it isn’t making stuff up but simply reacting to what has been there all along, the small voice inside of me, the one that I remember now was constantly present as a child, before the layers and layers were created, the one that let me act and be, before the wrongness of my condition became apparent to those around me, and I learned to cover it up, and build the layers.
That voice is back, because I am a different gender, but the one I knew I was. It tells me to always be nice and act in love, and be gracious and kind. And I act that way and think that way now, all too poorly, but I try. And sometimes the layers do come back, and I have to look at what I am doing, using old ways, and interfering with who I am, confusing people too, becuase I almost become a strangley differnt person. But those are slowly becoming less and less, because I know it is all coping crap coming back, and I don't need that stuff now.
So this is a happy story too. I’ve finally coordinated mind with body, changed my mind to accommodate new facts. And it feels so…integrated, so secure, so damn right.
- John Maynard Keynes
Thinking and acting in a different gender is hard. And it isn't because one has to make stuff up ("Let's see, what would a woman do here?") although there is a little bit of that in the beginning. No what is hard is getting rid of the stuff I came with prior to transition, that is, the layers and layers of thought that I imposed on myself to convince myself that I had a male's brain (more of that in a great article from the WSJ here.) The one scientific fact about being a transsexual (which is a cool word in a way, far better than transgender or trans, as far as I am concerned) that seems to be certain, based on over 200 different neuroanatomy studies (see here) is that a female transsexual’s brain is more like a woman's than a man's. So I never really had a male brain, and that makes sense in so many ways looking back on how I tried to fit in, with a male body but a female brain.
And attempts to cope with that situation led to my cognitive layers. We all have them, layers and layers of rules, rationalizations, and other cognitive phenomena, especially as we get older. They influence our behavior and thoughts, and I think that those layers are one of the things Christ told us to get rid of: "Unless you be as a child..." And sometimes we can and do, and move ahead happy with our simpler ways of thinking. But not often and it has always amazed me how many layers there are; and how we may never really get rid of them. For example, someone who is constantly late may have any number of reasons for doing so, some of them a reaction to authority ("I'm not going to live by their clock!") and of course others.
What happened in my life was like that. I had to get rid of layers of aggression, imposed on myself because the world constantly frustrated me, because I was reacting the “Wrong” way, as a chick trying to be a guy, but I don’t know that, just that I couldn’t get what I wanted, what others seemed to have. So I resorted to aggression; beating people up to get what I wanted. I became a football player, and then a lawyer, skilled in meeting the battle.
But the problem was when I realized who I was (more on that in a previous post here), I couldn’t use any of that, any of those layers I had built up over almost 50 years. And those layers weren’t only bad. They sustained me and allowed me to live, because even though I covered up my true nature, I needed some coping mechanism, and that is what these layers were: helping me cope with a condition that I may have dimly known I had. So I had to, as well, try to learn new skills to replace the old; if the old would have me yelling at people to get my way, the new had me not knowing what to do to get my way.
And slowly, very slowly, the answer has come and it is a surprising one because, as I said at the beginning, it isn’t making stuff up but simply reacting to what has been there all along, the small voice inside of me, the one that I remember now was constantly present as a child, before the layers and layers were created, the one that let me act and be, before the wrongness of my condition became apparent to those around me, and I learned to cover it up, and build the layers.
That voice is back, because I am a different gender, but the one I knew I was. It tells me to always be nice and act in love, and be gracious and kind. And I act that way and think that way now, all too poorly, but I try. And sometimes the layers do come back, and I have to look at what I am doing, using old ways, and interfering with who I am, confusing people too, becuase I almost become a strangley differnt person. But those are slowly becoming less and less, because I know it is all coping crap coming back, and I don't need that stuff now.
So this is a happy story too. I’ve finally coordinated mind with body, changed my mind to accommodate new facts. And it feels so…integrated, so secure, so damn right.