Ballet

"All real ballets, W. H. Auden wrote in his essay 'Ballet's Present Eden,' take place in a world where there is no memory and no anticipation; the joys of life are those of the immediate and eternal present. Auden, a friend of George Balanchine, was referring the 'The Nutcracker,' but he might as well ahve been talking about childhood."

New York Times, Roslyn Sulcas, November 30, 2009

Graduation notes, 2008

Writer's prayer: Grant me the intelligence and patience to find the true pattern.

The work of doing and undoing is also part of the work.

William Stafford on a cure for writer's block: "Lower your standards."

Nietzsche: He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

Einstein: Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.

Seamus Heaney on history and hope

History says don't hope on this side of the grave. Hope for a great sea change ont he far side of revenge.

Robert Frost

No mistakes, no journey.

Ceremonies, good and bad

Humankind has established for itself ceremonies to mark important social events. These ceremonies fall into two categories, Elevation ceremonies include such events as weddings, baptisms, graduations, and installations. Then there are so-called Degredation ceremonies, such as courts martial.

Wristwatches

"You know, that's one thing Manon wasn't wearing: a watch. You don't see a lot of watch wearing in the soprano world. Have you ever noticed that? Tosca? No watch. Madame Butterfly? Again, no watch."

He is no longer paying attention, but it doesn't stop me. We have traded places. "If in La Boheme you gave everyone wristwatches, you'd have a happy ending...You wouldn't have that guy singing about his coat. He'd look at his watch and go 'Yikes!'"

--from Who Will Run the Frog Hospital, Lorrie Moore, 1994

Culture, an observation

No doubt there is an eternal appeal to lists. As the philosopher and novelist Umberto Eco recently said in a published interivew, "The list is the origin of culture."

From Noam cohen's story in the New York Times Business Section on Bill Simmons sports column on ESPN.Com

Narratives--the ingredients

Narratives, aristotle suggests in his 'Poetics,' work best if they're arranged around some pre-existing unit of time: sunrise to sunset, January to December. This is observed by Jess Row in his NYTBR review of Maureen Howard's The Rags of Time, November 15, 2009.

Archives security

How does a politically sensitive harddrive go missing? Here's the answer:

http://www.archives.gov/news/clinton-hard-drive-faq-2009-5-20.pdf

We must learn to regard people less in light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

New Mexico again

Sunday morning in Albuquerque just before meeting Ray Suarez in the fall of 2008.

More New Mexico

New Mexico

Outside the library in Los Alamos, New Mexico, after a swim in the Olympic pool there.

The Meaning of Life

George Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen...who shares the realization that one of the purposes of life is to examine the purposes of life.

--from The Meaning of Life: according to our century's greatest writers and thinkers
collected by Hugh S. Moorhead. 1988. Chicago Review Press

Playwright Alan Ayckbourn after a stroke

A very nice doctor came in and said, 'Are you aware that when you say yes, you're saying no?'

I said, 'No.'

And he said, 'I don't think this conversation can continue.'

--Quoted in The New York Times, April 22, 2009

What is good?

At a meeting of the college faculty, an angel suddenly appears and tells the head of the philosophy department, "I will grant you whichever of three blessings you choose: Widsom, Beauty--or ten million dollars."
Immediately, the professor chooses Wisdom.
There is a flash of lightning, and the professor appears transformed, but he just sits there, staring down at the table. One of his colleagues whispers, "Say something."
The professor says, "I should have taken the money."

--from Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar...: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes, by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein. 2007, Abrams Image. New York.

Oatmeal--the new black

"With the success of Starbucks and Jamba Juice, there are a lot of people interested in oatmeal, it's becoming the new black. Oatmeal is in."

--Mark Schiller, President of Pepsico/Quaker Food and Snacks Division (maker of Frito-Lay, Rice-a-Roni, Aunt Jemima, and of course, Pepsi products)

How the market works

"Over the last century the stock market has outperformed cash in every decade apart from the thirties. Far outperformed. As a rule of thumb, you can expect your capital to double over five years. In the current market conditions, you can reduce that figure to three, perhaps even two. "
"How does it work?" I asked him. "I invest in companies and they let me share in their profits?"
"No," he said. "Well, yes, that's a small aspect of it. They give you a dividend. But what really propels your investment upwards is speculation."
"Speculation?" I repeated. "What's that?"
"Shares are constantly being bought and sold," he said. "The prices aren't fixed: they change depending on what people are prepared to pay for them. When people buy shares, they don't value them by what they actually represent in terms of goods or services: they value them by what they might by worth, in an imaginary future."
"But what if that future comes and they're not worth what people thought they would be?" I asked.
"It never does," said Matthew Younger. "By the time one future's there, there's another one being imagined. The collective imagination of all the investors keeps projecting futures, keeping the share buoyant. O f course, sometimes a particular set of shares stop catching people's imagination, so they fall. It's our job to get you out of a particular one before it falls -- and, conversely, to get you into another when it's just abo ut to shoot up."
"What if everyone stops imagining futuers for all of them at the same time?" I asked him.
"Ah!" Younger's eyebrows dipped into a frown, and his voice became quieter, withdrawing from the room back to his small mouth and chest. "That throws the switch on the whole system and the market crashes. That's what happened in '29. In theory it could happen again." He looked sombre for a moment; then his hearty look came back -- and, with it, his booming voice as he resumed: "But if no one thinks it will, it won't."

--from Remainder, a novel by Tom McCarthy (quote taken from a reader's copy distributed by the publisher to libraries and bookstores)

“Life has a practice of living you, if you don't live it.”

Philip Larkin

The Power of Words

"Sometimes" by Shenagh Pugh, included in a Garrison Keillor anthology entitled Good Poems:

Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost, green thrives, the crops don't fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
the sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.

March 28, 2009