m759's Xanga

On Dryness:

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 21:00:00 GMT

"Hancock" Powers to the Top
of July Fourth Box Office

-- This evening's online
New York Times

New York Lottery
Sunday, July 6,
2008:

Mid-day 307
Evening 921

Log24 3/07:

Symbols:

Log24 9/21:

"The consolations of form,
the clean crystalline work"

-- Iris Murdoch,
"Against Dryness"

Will Smith
on Chess

Will Smith

The Independent, 9 July 2004:

"A devoted father, Smith passes on his philosophy of life to his children through chess, among other things.

'My father taught me how to play chess at seven and introduced beautiful concepts that I try to pass on to my kids. The elements and concepts of life are so perfectly illustrated on a chess board. The ability to accurately assess your position is the key to chess, which I also think is the key to life.'

He pauses, searching for an example. 'Everything you do in your life is a move. You wake up in the morning, you strap on a gun, and you walk out on the street-- that's a move. You've made a move and the universe is going to respond with its move.

'Whatever move you're going to make in your life to be successful, you have to accurately access the next couple of moves-- like what's going to happen if you do this? Because once you've made your move, you can't take it back. The universe is going to respond.'

Smith has just finished reading The Alchemist, by the Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho: 'It says the entire world is contained in one grain of sand, and you can learn everything you need to learn about the entire universe from that one grain of sand. That is the kind of concept I'm teaching my kids.'"

Related material:

"Philosophers' Stone"
and other entries
of June 25, 2008

Today's Sermon:

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 09:00:02 GMT

The Pursuit of Happyness

"Remember that we deal with
Mary Chapin Carpenter --
cunning, baffling, and powerful."

-- Saying adapted
from the Big Book of
Alcoholics Anonymous

"I'm Pabst Blue Ribbon, American."

-- The Telegraph, May 7, 2008

Former U.S. Senator Jesse Helms
was city editor at the Raleigh Times.

See the Fourth of July.

See also last Thursday.

The Lottery Theater presents...

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 08:00:01 GMT

The Bacchae
by Euripides

New York Lottery
on the Fourth of July:

Mid-day 678
Evening 506

These numbers may be
interpreted as references to a
current Lincoln Center play --
The Bacchae, by Euripides.

Line 678 of The Bacchae --

From a Brandeis class's translation (2006):

Messenger:

[677] Our feeding herds of cattle were just climbing
[678] above the treeline when the sun
[679] sent forth its rays to warm the earth.

Related cartoon by Ed Arno
(See yesterday morning's Log24
and entries of June 27):

Related review by Charles Isherwood in today's New York Times:

"A god deserves a great entrance. And Dionysus, the god of wine and party boy of Mount Olympus, whose celebratory rituals got the whole drama thing rolling in the first place, surely merits a spectacular one...."

Line 506 of The Bacchae --

From a 1988 translation (pdf) by Matthew A. Neuburg--

Dionysus:

[506] You don’t know what you’re saying, what you’re doing, who you are.

Translator's note:

506 The state of this line in the MSS has driven editors to despair; in particular, the first of the things Pentheus is said not to know is, in Greek, “what you are living,” which seems doubtful Greek. Many emendations have been proposed; I accept here DODDS’s emendation, but I have a feeling we’re missing something.

AMEN.

For the Fourth of July...

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 11:30:13 GMT

In memory of
Senator Jesse Helms, R-NC:

"I'm a church beside the highway
where the ditches never drain,
I'm a Baptist like my daddy,
and Jesus knows my name."

-- Mary Chapin Carpenter

ART WARS continued:

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 08:00:00 GMT

REDEMPTION

"I need a photo-opportunity,
I want a shot at redemption.
Don't want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard."
-- Paul Simon

From Log24 on June 27, 2008,
the day that comic-book artist
Michael Turner died at 37 --

Van Gogh (by Ed Arno) in
The Paradise of Childhood
(by Edward Wiebé):

For Turner's photo-opportunity,
click on Lara.

ART WARS continued:

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:11:20 GMT

De Haut en Bas

"... this hard prize,
Fully made, fully apparent,
fully found"

-- Wallace Stevens,
"Credences of Summer"

Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro
in "The Score"

The Prize:

For Champlain at Cap Diamant:

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:00:00 GMT

Highs and Lows

From today's New York Times:

This week, we the people of North America are staging two celebrations. The Fourth of July is the 232nd birthday of the United States....

In Canada, today, another ceremony will mark the 400th anniversary of Quebec City, the first permanent settlement in New France.

Paul Simon on religion:

"I need a photo opportunity,
I want a shot at redemption...."

Log24 on August 8, 2002 --

The cast of "Some Girls,"
a film set in Quebec City:

"Don't want to end up a cartoon
in a cartoon graveyard."

Amen, sister.

Catholic Koan:

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 07:59:00 GMT

Blasphemous Thoughts
about Thor

Commonweal on Gopnik on Chesterton:

"Gopnik thinks Chesterton’s aphorisms are better than any but Oscar Wilde’s, and he describes some of them as 'genuine Catholic koans, pregnant and profound.' For example: 'Blasphemy depends on belief, and is fading with it. If anyone doubts this, let him sit down seriously and try to think blasphemous thoughts about Thor.'"

Pregnant and Profound:
Douglas Adams on Thor

Kate felt quite dizzy. She didn't know exactly what it was that had just happened, but she felt pretty damn certain that it was the sort of experience that her mother would not have approved of on a first date.

"Is this all part of what we have to do to go to Asgard?" she said. "Or are you just fooling around?"

"We will go to Asgard... now," he said.

At that moment he raised his hand as if to pluck an apple, but instead of plucking he made a tiny, sharp turning movement.The effect was as if he had twisted the entire world through a billionth part of a billionth part of a degree. Everything shifted, was for a moment minutely out of focus, and then snapped back again as a suddenly different world.

-- The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

See also
The Turning:

"A theorem proposed betwen the two--"

-- Wallace Stevens, "The Rock"

From The History of Mathematics,
by Roger Cooke

"... point A
In a perspective that begins again
At B...."

-- Wallace Stevens, "The Rock"

Review:

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:00:00 GMT

Let Noon Be Fair

"The serpent's eyes shine
As he wraps around the vine"

-- "The Garden of Allah"

A Good Year

-- Last summer's journal

Related material:

Cover illustration:

Spies returning from the land of
Canaan with a cluster of grapes.

Colored woodcut from
Biblia Sacra Germanica,
Nuremberg, Anton Koberger, 1483.
Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

The Last Target:

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:28:01 GMT

Bull's-Eye

On this date in 1961,
Ernest Hemingway shot
himself.

The Talented Patricia Highsmith

"Yes, oh, God, Robin was beautiful. [....] A sort of first position in attention, a face that will age only under the blows of perpetual childhood. The temples like those of young beasts cutting horns, as if they were sleeping eyes. And that look on a face we follow like a witch-fire."

-- Djuna Barnes, Nightwood

Related material:

The Languages of Addiction,
Ch. 13: The Barnes Complex

See also
The Garden of Eden.