quantum

Errol Morris's The Umbrella Man, a delight, put me in mind of one of those little historical facts that nearly awes me with its weird resonance: that Lyndon Johnson as a boy had a dog named "Bigham Young."

fought

As a personal, practical matter, I sometimes wonder whether freedom is anything but a facet of courage.

ipso facto

Within law - and I suppose within most fields - there are a handful of recurring ways in which research resolves.  To take two boring examples: a topic may turn out to be simply unknown to the literature or else clearly settled.  Some of the other pattern outcomes are more interesting.  For example, a topic may turn out to be a false topic - something that is actually about something else.  Or, a topic can be a unit finding exercise - really about whether an object is to be considered one or many.  And so on.

Vague I know.  But it enjoyable to get to the point in research where, even if I don't know the answers to my questions, I can at least look around and say ah yes, this kind of resolution again.

nearer

I turn off the DVD player
and it goes "beep beep."

From the bedroom,
sorting socks,
my love says
"beep beep."

And "beep beep"
I say back,
from the living room.

And all is well.
He and I
As two children
Amidst the snowy blank
That all the world is
But we to ourselves.

fissile

As an individual, it is one of the scariest large truths.  As an observer of mankind, it is one of the most beautiful: That the good human society is one that brings the twin suns of order and freedom into orbit around one another, and by orbiting around their center of gravity, itself empty, holds these fiery ideals in stable place, safely centered, far from the wider, cooler orbits of humankind within that greater social sphere.

110

A sort of fog of work - diffuse and everwhere, impossible to cut through.

could

Better than the veiled threat: the veiled promise.

transit

In some ways, I feel most alive and content walking from home to the station, and then from the station to the office - and back.  People's faces, all going somewhere. 

Vergerus

What is this body -
Fog obscuring,
Self itself
Or jug?

I wake;
I see light
And leap from bed
To feel myself young.

The body is time,
A seismograph's drum
Turning to record
Tremors amplified.

Instrumentation,
Organic springs
Uncoiling,
Trembling.

Wound once,
The tension
Drives, then slackens
Into reflection.

bifocal

One may be moral in the method, or moral in the aim.  Sometimes both, but either will do.  Only that is immoral which can be neither.  What is wrong aligns imperfectly with this.

you mean now?

what time is it
what time it is
is it what time
time what is it

another shimmering in the distance

More distant, fainter, but one feels a tremble of awe.  Not for the effectiveness, nor the faith, nor even the bravery.  Simply for the wonderful strangeness of mankind: Angels in Ciudad Juárez.

wtc

I look out my office window this morning and catch a steady sliver of lights, high behind the Chrysler Building to my south.  Stop, think, triangulate.  Ah!  It's the new World Trade Center, now peeking over the Midtown highrises, bare floors strung with temporary lamps.

silent

The conscience is useful fear.

to be seen

How little removed from animal is a man with no need for the regard of others.

jig

Intellegence is not likable. And that is the upended floor tack that made you dance.

fleur

BBC News is a very choice flower to have sprung from the corpse of empire.

sparta

Can the military aspects of a culture be beautiful?  I do not mean the ephemera of marching bands, uniforms and physicality, but the military as such.  The answer is yes, in the same way that the artistic, academic, child-rearing or sacred aspects of a culture may be beautiful.  The reason the question is hard is that violent killing - which is not only contrary to beauty but also to the good - is necessarily a capacity of military culture, and potentially its point.  But a military may be instead fundamentally about the control, regimentation - and thereby sublimation - of the violence naturally in man.  If and as a transcendence of violence, then, a military may be beautiful, even an object of proper love.  That appreciation is borne, though, of a hatred of violence, not a love for it, and that remains a control on the appreciation.  A bloodthirsty military, or a bloodthirsty military culture, cannot be beautiful.