European outliers

All Kant and no Kierkegaard makes Jack a dull boy.

I'll be phoning it in for Christmas

Waiting at the the coffee shop, where the Christmas music is running nonstop.  Next up: "Here Comes Suzy Snowflake," which turns out to be as formulaic a baby boomer Christmas tune as I've ever heard.  Charmless.  Even the vocals sound bored.  Expert tip: when you're out of tuneful holiday song ideas, go far out, go big, go camp.  Bonus points for, choreographed neck snaps and arm-windmills.  Exempli gratia: "It's Turkey Lurkey Time."

what is man?

Here we have Alexis de Tocqueville's remarkable passage, in Democracy in America, so like the wisdom books of the Hebrew scriptures, in particular Ecclesiastes.  The idea that man has the notion of knowledge - but not knowledge itself - is a particularly direct correspondence.

There is no need to traverse earth and sky to find a wondrous object full of contrasts of infinite greatness and littleness, of deep gloom and amazing brightness, capable at the same time of arousing piety, wonder, scorn, and terror. I have only to contemplate myself; man comes from nothing, passes through time, and disappears forever in the bosom of God. He is seen but for a moment wandering on the verge of two abysses, and then is lost.

If man were wholly ignorant of himself he would have no poetry in him, for one cannot describe what one does not conceive. If he saw himself clearly, his imagination would remain idle and would have nothing to add to the picture. But the nature of man is sufficiently revealed for him to know something of himself and sufficiently veiled to leave much in impenetrable darkness, a darkness in which he ever gropes, forever in vain, trying to understand himself.

U TT

I will miss him.  We all miss men of that generation.  Diligently providing for their families, practicing their professions with competence and ingenuity, a little remote, filled with a well earned dignity.  And he: an island of honesty in a sea of corruption, whose waves beat on him and his family relentlessly.  His integrity was firm, and would not erode.  Only his heart stopped; his family and spirit go on.

Rubik's Cube

Imagine a chest of many drawers - above and below, side by side -  such as a card catalogue cabinet.  Now imagine the cabinet with its drawers removed: one imagines an empty grid of supports and rails for the drawers.  But it ought to be possible to create a chest of drawers in which each drawer is supported and guided only by the surrounding drawers (or, at the edges only, by the cabinet).  I wonder if such cabinet of such construction actually exists.

the small vices

Goodness comes with unseen gifts in her shy pockets; evil goes with pockets stuffed and your refrigerator door left open.

pavé

I dreamt last night that I awoke to see a beautiful bit of driftwood, covered in the most perfect dew, lit by the first shaft of morning light, pale and pure.  No morning dew was ever this perfect, so like diamond spheres. 

But as my eyes adjusted, the driftwood was in fact my hand: I was covered head to toe in this beautiful dew.  I glistened like a jewel.  And so did you: I got up and met, it seemed, everyone I had ever known, and we each shone in our shrouds of perfect dew, lit by the low, dawn light.  I especially saw two beloved and elderly relations, who sparkled as brightly as any.  We were all barefoot on an expanse of soft mauve sand, like a shore with no ocean in sight.  I asked one of you if the dew would evaporate and was told that no, this dew was mineral oil and would last. 

I woke again, truly this time, and showered for work, for a moment transfixed by the streams of water coming from the showerhead, sparkling under the light of a 60 watt bulb.

It was a vision of heaven, more nearly than any I ever dreamt.

pavé?

Kim Jong-un purged his uncle from North Korea's ruling elite for, among other crimes, "dreaming different dreams."  George Orwell would be proud.

superannuated

Modern medicine sets us up to grow so old that we are, in the final few years, half-buried alive.

hydraulic pressure

What rare thoughts and feelings must belong to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi today.

Mandela

No leader of the first rank has been more like Washington, in mode of power, carriage, context and, withal, in goodness.

One-third of Zorro

The slash is well named. It is brutal punctuation.

too young to be spry

"Pert" is one of those adjectives best avoided that are, all the same, just so much fun.

imagine

What if there were a Fred Rogers for middle age?