basso continuo

When we speak of immortality, we must take care.  Two very different things are meant by the same term.  There is the state of immortality and then the transition to that state.  Or, yet more precisely, the transition from the contrary state.  That is, the point of much of our talk of immortality is found in demortalization.  And then there is the talk, quite different, of radical immortality: eternal and unconditional stasis as to existence.

The contrast is best expressed in sacred music: demortalization comes as ascent; radical immortality comes as a basso continuo, from Bach to Mendelssohn to Glass to Part.

two others

The transitive property fixedly applies only to quantity.

Crews

More good is done by charm than by argument.

Winchesters

My grandmother and her sisters would walk down to Stamp Creek Baptist Church as children for Sunday morning services.  And if the rain made the dirt road impassible, they'd stop down at the Poder's and sit with them before going back to their farm for dinner.  The question was whether to tell Dad they'd sat with the Poder's.  The sisters were divided on this.  One thought to tell the truth, another to lie and say they'd gone on down to church, and the third wanted to keep silent.

tacit

There's a middle path of silence between truth and falsehood.  And indeed all truth and all falsehood is admixed with silence.  Nobody says all, nor could.

the web

Culturally, of course, gay marriage does change what marriage is for others, too: at large and over time.  (That is, anyone who wants to have a specialized view of marriage - as an image of the relation between Christ and His church, for example - may continue to do so.  But this will not be culturally supported any more than it ever was.  It might, of course, become (yet) more culturally dissonant.)

The easy example is premarital sex.  Gay marriage, I predict, will lock in the cultural relocation of marriage from the beginning to the middle of a committed sexual relationship between the participants.  Overall, not only for gays who marry.

Indeed, the marriage will often mark the inflection point of the transition from a sexually magnetic relationship to a publicly committed, loving relationship with relatively less sex.  Gay marriage hastens, that is, the transition (in cultural perception rather than in fact) of extramarital sex to normal and of marital sex to extra.

eyes

Every day I teach myself lessons from my fellow passengers on subway cars.  From the delivery boys, with their heavy bike chains and weary faces: work harder; don't complain.  From the beautiful: look good, dress sharp.  From the old: life is a short day.  From the young: I am not young.  These obvious, shallow lessons, drop by drop, carve deep pools in my mind.

belief

Leave aside whether it is true or false: to believe in literal 7-day, young earth creation at this point conditions how one thinks of other issues.  Not because of creationism, as such, but because one must do something mentally and emotionally with the conflicting evidence.

MEW

Much of successfully, usefully sophisticated legal thought consists of resisting - or rather postponing - or rather timing - the resolution.  It must come at the right moment.  Until then, thought - the issue - remains layered, interactive, moving parts.  For legal ideas - in their legality - are not the cup but the handle, the rim, the glaze, the chipped edge and the superglue that reattached the chip.  These and not the cup itself are what the law works upon - precisely to produce, at last, the cup.

over-here'd

A convincing local, with the variety of Niw Yaw'ka's accent that borders on Bostonian, is taking is out of town relations sight seeing in East Midtown, near my work.  They drink it all in and snap pictures.  He narrates.

"And that's the 59th Street Bridge.  Or the Queensboro Bridge.  Or the Ed Koch Bridge!  All you have to do in this town to get something named after you is die.  When I die I guess they'll name a fire hydrant after me for dogs to piss on."

Of course, Koch isn't dead, but I take his point.

glories

The physical equipment of democracy: booths, boxes, lists, cards, indexes, folding tables, a flag on a stand shoved out of the way.

moiety

By the time one is ordering DVDs on Levi-Strauss from Netflix, rock bottom has been hit.  Excessive drinking, or almost any bad habit would be better.

substitute diligence

Ambition motivates hard work and is, in this respect, a virtue.

rolling stone

The subways had been down since Sunday, on account of Sandy.  But parts reopened this morning, including my commute.  So I got on the first train and exited my usual midtown stop.  Up the stairs to the sidewalk.  But look!  The iron treads of the stairs had gathered rust in the meanwhile - for a time not polished by the constant step of commuters' shoes.

cynical

The lady in line ahead of me at the drug store was buying elastic underwear - the kind that shapes your body and flattens your belly to make you look thinner.  The brand name: Truly Fit.

depending from

As Sandy passes, my building sways and my windows bow.  The door chain hangs, swinging, or rather, the building sways around its mass.

pop quiz

Describe the difference between aphoristic and homiletic expression in 140 characters.

twitter's doorknob

An aphorism is the spark that flies from the doorknob as one is leaving the room of thought.

red and white stripes

I've been going to the same barber for years.  He seemed to be an assistant manager at the beginning, but he opened up an outpost shop under the same ownership nearer my work, and since then I've been going there.  I have the sense that he bought in - at any rate he's the boss at the new location.  Everyone is Armenian.

At first, it was all professional wrestling on the televisions, and framed pictures of my barber mugging, thumbs up, next to some professional wrestling figure.  A wall of fan photos, in which you could watch him age - see the youth in his face melt away.  And the capes were printed with scantily clad bimbos.  Every morning I pass and he waves, or if he's standing in the doorway, he says hello.

I suppose he's matured.  Lately the television is soccer or, occasionally, market news.  The capes are plain, good cloth now, embroidered with "Premium Barber Shop" - the name of the place.  He's gained a little paunch.  And this morning, the sweatshirt was gone.  He was wearing a red-and-white striped dress shirt, with contrasting all-white cuffs and collar.  He said not "hello" but "good morning" and nodded a bit as he did.  He has become The Barber.

rooftop

In one's career - not just professionally, but creatively and in pursuit of knowledge - it is smart to ask whether an institution or situation is a platform or a shelter.  Whether it promotes but exposes, or else protects but conceals.  (And as always, with heuristics, whether it's even a useful distinction.)