vacation

A pleasing blank.

enlightenment

It is too simple to be true, but it gets at something: reason can be conceived as an elaboration of, as an evolved descendant of, animal aggression. One might even say that a rational form of government is violent on a different plane. I do not say "is merely violent on a different plane": dimension and development of the violence matter plenty if, for example, the difference is a reduction in bloodshed.

man in

There's a minute or two, some eveings, during which the sky has the same luminous intensity and saturation of hue as the lamps of the traffic light. One looks up from the cross walk and is greeting by a beautiful full green moon.

gestation

In the day since seeing it, Un Prophète has matured in my mind from one of the finest movies I've seen (not least for the sustained, perspectival morality necessary to and motivating its formal amorality). As I say, it has matured in my mind over the last day from one of the best movies I've seen into one of the best interior experiences I've had. The pregnant bleakness of this movie reminds me of only one other cinematic creation I know: those stony, white-painted, hard-staring scenes from Fanny and Alexander set in the Bishop's house.

There are other correspondences between those Bishop's house scenes and the French prison scenes: the cinematic treatment of white, bright sunlight as a symbol for a certain kind of insistent evil - the peculiar evil latent in bleach or lime.

Dichogamy

It is interesting - not all that productive, though - to think of much human work as peculiarly generated by the interaction of young adults and elders, thought of as two genders, understood more in contrast than in isolation.

genesis

Other
Connection
Item
Transaction

comfort my people

It comes as a momentary shock - but then as a realization of the obvious - to understand that a powerful factor in the development of the viewpoints of most people is the desire for comfort.

elves

The human mind: so cause-happy. I glance under my desk this morning and see a few strewn dots of paper, fallen from my three-hole punch. Somehow the patten was celebratory, like confetti, and one hears the mental question, half-embarassed at itself: "was there a tiny party down there last night?"

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly - mind gotta find causes.

tipple

To have a few vices feels (is?) invigorating. It flatters one's (confirms one's?) freedom.

But to be had by a vice is to know the truth of Christ's comparison: sin is a harder master than virtue.

A personal discipline, though, does all that vice does - both in vigor and in harshness - and though it usually yields nothing, it may yield much.

go on

One of the low down, awful things about me is that I would often rather fill in a spreadsheet with numbers -

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, (even now I want to keep going)...

- I would often rather do that than think about something serious. And that's low down.

go

The feeling of mental inertia - the difficulty in starting a task and the ease of continuing it once begun - is so similar to the phenomenon of physical inertia, that one wonders whether, somehow, deep in the brain, mental inertia simply is physical inertia.

One wonders this even though mental inertia is easy to account for from thought based causes: clearing distractions, gathering facts, ordering work, segmenting concepts. All of that beginning-work is harder than execution, even when execution is drudgery.

dray

Facts, stubborn factual truth, rule the necessary barnyards of life - law firms, pharmacies, warehouses, the land. The temples, though, belong to ministers of feeling reaching for truths of force: churches, prisons, courtrooms, the sea.

vow

Strictly speaking, I don't think it is possible to betray or honor an individual. One betrays a common understanding (usually common to more than the subject and object). The individual may be harmed or upheld, but it is something held in common (though not necessarily by the betraying subject) that is betrayed or honored.

Put short: Fidelity and infidelity are necessarily public acts.

neckbone

Why think epigrammatically? The epigram reaches the joint of reason to moral sentiment, which is its motive or master. The epigram pleases and is understood by moral sentiment, which delights in being noticed and shaped. And by focusing on the rational joint, the epigram obtains leverage, and the feeling, to the listener, of resulting movement is a revelation of self that delights, even when the matter of the epigram is unhappy.

chirp

Sir, you are poor because you have too little to sell.

sophistication

Lacenaire: I'd spill torrents of blood to give you rivers of diamonds.

Garance: I'd settle for less.

doctorow

How did I get this far into my reading (and adult) life without knowing the word mons?

godzilla

The wretchedness of individual man is the certainty of death and the lack of much to give or subsist upon.

The wretchedness of social man is that, to avoid bloodshed, we must tend to, placate and occasionally give way to that rather nasty agglomeration: a majority.

The glory of individual man is a peaceful path to a simple end, especially when that course was sweet to those nearby who knew it.

The glory of social man is the commerce of ideas and goods amongst the cities.

redden

Ordinarily, in court, the truth will out.

this is what I try to give

One strand of maturation is to appreciate better the role of gift-wrapping paper.

united church

A simple belief in God makes easy that necessary and beautiful conviction of the infinite worth of each individual person, and of the universal brotherhood and sisterhood of humankind. Convictions that are very hard to sustain otherwise. And some forms of religion - often but not always perceived as liberal - are felt, motivated and sustained by exactly this - the facilitation of brotherly love.

hive

To pass above on elevated tracks and see a fenced lot stacked high with yellow-painted taxi cab fenders, doors, hoods - put on me an impression of awe and gave a reflection of dread.

comforting the able

A related point: the more aware a friend is - the more aware of self and others and future prospects - the harder it is to offer comfort beyond sincere love and thoughtful understanding. Most forms of comfort are gentle bamboozlements, but for the alert and able, only love and understanding - and small acts of usefulness - are a balm.

This is fulfilling both for the loving and the loved.

Of course, comforting one who is just shy of aware is the same, with the beautiful addition of explanation. Think of the wonderful relief of a correct diagnosis from a sympathetic doctor or friend.

mitigation cloaked

But mitigations do not inspire - what people want are solutions. So mitigations are often cloaked as solutions. Religions, marriages, politics - innumerable of the good mitigations of each kind have been sold as solutions, adopted as solutions, and done good because they are not solutions - only mitigations.

more unnatural

Modernity is not the problem - the problem is within humanity, is an aspect of human kind, is part of human nature. But real solutions to humanity's core problems are worse than what they (dis)solve. Mitigation is the calling. To tame, entrance, enfeeble, hem, complicate, even harness what is natural but wrong within us each, and about us all.

unnatural

Many things are natural but bad. It is natural but bad to resent one's betters simply for the results of their talents, good fortune or effort. It is natural but bad to seek out those who may be oppressed and oppress them. It is natural, but impolite, to spit on the sidewalk. It is natural, but evil, to kill one's brother in raging jealousy.

That is why the argument that something is natural - or unnatural - carries little weight with me unless it is part of a larger and more sensitive argument. For example, that it is unnatural for old people's knees to flex to the point of fully kneeling is a perfectly sound argument for kneeling benches at the parish church.

permanently tired

When I am very tired I am irritable and dull. Some people are generally irritable and dull. Perhaps some such people are, at bottom, tired all the time, as a basic trait or burden?

Perhaps - but they would have to be more tired than can be addressed by adaptation.

starting march

The end of religion for me was the realization that no truth could sustain the introduction I wanted to give it: "Come we now to the universal core."

But nothing can follow that.

universal

We all take pleasure in the realization that an enemy is stupid or weak. This is not from the increased prospect of prevailing, for we feel it even in learning that a past enemy had been stupid or weak.

But then again perhaps it is the feeling of an increased prospect of prevailing, even though the occurance is past, never to recur: for so much of what we feel is the sensation of an inward play, and in that uncoiling of mental scenario, what's past is here, even as what might be, or what's hoped for, is here.

But what is here, often enough, is merely and flatly here. Daily bread. Quotidian. The alternatives, the glorious present, comes in three forms: the synchronicity of mental scenario and occurrence, which is a realization, or an absence of scenario that leaves us bare within occurrence, which is enrapture, or the sudden change of situation, which is transport.

sharp ascender, bowled decender, reaching tail

-

August

-

What a beautiful word August is, if said at a moderate speed, written with a good hand, or printed from a friendly roman font.

aha

How did I miss it all these years:

Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

more eames

Form follows function, but the function of form may be very subtle. In government the manner of conducting deliberations and the like is as important as the policies that emerge. The accouterments - the globe and sword, book and map, raiment and gesture - within a portrait of state may be integral.

twain

The great advantage of shacking up is that it makes not being single easier to imagine: it's an accelleration ramp. This disadvantage is that it obscures the mystery of being two, which is there whether or not wanted, and whether kept sacred or profaned.

comments

Anonymity eases vice, and strips virtue of its rewards.

bald egal

The (relatively) poor are hard to befriend because of their troubles. And so with all those who are encamped with woe: only another wretch may enter in without the smell of charity or superiority.

Where status builds a wall that conceals the charitable or woeful offense, however, friendships are again easy.

glad hand

There is a temptation: to utilize another's uninvited misunderstanding to obtain a result that would not have been agreed if understood. But this is unsafe and usually wrong. The exceptions are generally short term misunderstandings, borne of another's emotional or other objective limitations, that stand athwart agreement and the other's urgent interests.

very well, thank you

The better part of courtesy and social grace is to signal that one is profitable to be near - a source of pleasure and strength, and no burden.

pacific

My potential I must lose, grain by grain.

desire

I would not be without my work, my pleasures, or my friends. Let me have but the means to hold them.

design

The world is not as we would have it and we are not as we yearn to be. This is the genesis of design, which becomes the tense opposite of death, victorious only in the struggle, able finally to achieve only its noble defeat.

On some days this is the happy and industrious sense of doom that lights my way.