Play It

From a Kol Nidre sermon:

“…in every generation 36 righteous
greet the Shechinah,
   the Divine Presence…” 

A scene at the Sands in Las Vegas,
from Play It As It Lays,
by Joan Didion:

“What do you think,”
Maria could hear
one of the men saying….

“Thirty-six,” the girl said. 
“But a good thirty-six.”

For the rest of the time
Maria was in Las Vegas
she wore dark glasses.
She did not decide to
stay in Vegas: she only
failed to leave.

Today’s site music, in honor of
Sinatra’s birthday, is “Angel Eyes.”

Sequel

ART WARS

Stan Rice, Poet and Painter, Is Dead at 60… New York Times   Wed Dec 11 06:27:00 EST 2002

“This world is not conclusion;
A sequel stands beyond….”

— Emily Dickinson (See yesterday’s notes.)

And the hair of my flesh stood up (Job 4:15).
The emotional quality of the moment is
The religious experience of the atheist.
This is Day Three.
Ezra Pound makes me sit
Under the gold painted equestrian statue
At Central Park South and 5th.

— Stan Rice, “Doing Being” (See yesterday’s notes.)

Stan Rice died on Monday.
Today is Wednesday. 
This is Day Three. 

15	Then a spirit passed before my face;          the hair of my flesh stood up:
16	it stood still,          but I could not discern the form thereof: an image was before mine eyes, there was silence, and I heard a voice, saying,
17	Shall mortal man be more just than God?          Shall a man be more pure than his Maker?

Culture Clash at Midnight
in the Garden of Good and Evil

From the Catholic Church: John V. Apczynski Dept. of Theology St. Bonaventure U.

From Paris, Texas: Sam Shepard, playwright, actor, and author of Great Dream of Heaven.

In a future life, if not in this one, Dante might assign these two theologians to Purgatory, where they could teach one another.  Both might benefit if Shepard took Apczynski’s course “The Intellectual Journey“ and if Apczynski read Shepard’s new book of short stories, Great Dream of Heaven. 

Background music might consist of Sinatra singing “Three Coins in the Fountain” (for Shepard — See my journal notes of December 10, 2002) alternating with the Dixie Chicks singing “Cowboy, Take Me Away” (for Apczynski, who is perhaps unfamiliar with life on the range).  Today’s site music is this fervent prayer by the Dixie Chicks to a cowboy-theologian like Shepard.

Point of No Return

From Dr. Mac’s Cultural Calendar for December 10:

• On this day in 1864, General William T. Sherman’s Union army reached Savannah and the 12-day siege began.  Sherman was able to present the city to President Lincoln as a “Christmas present.”

An album recorded in September 1961:

Songs in the above list:

September Song * When the World was Young
I’ll Be Seeing You * I’ll See You Again
Memories of You * There Will Never Be Another You
Somewhere Along the Way * A Million Dreams Ago
It’s a Blue World * I’ll Remember April
These Foolish Things

Not in the list, but in the album:

As Time Goes By

The Savannah Connection:

Augustus Saint-Gaudens
William Tecumseh Sherman,
1892-1903 (installed 1903)
Central Park, New York City

From

The Necessary Angel,

by Wallace Stevens
(New York: Knopf, 1951)
 (New York: Vintage Books, 1966):

“The theory of poetry, that is to say, the total of the theories of poetry, often seems to become in time a mystical theology or, more simply, a mystique. The reason for this must by now be clear. The reason is the same reason why the pictures in a museum of modern art often seem to become in time a mystical aesthetic, a prodigious search of appearance, as if to find a way of saying and of establishing that all things, whether below or above appearance, are one and that it is only through reality, in which they are reflected or, it may be, joined together, that we can reach them. Under such stress, reality changes from substance to subtlety….”

Part of a journal entry for
October 25, 2002:

Trinity See… Bonaventure’s Itinerarium Mentis in Deum and a graves list for Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, final resting place for Johnny Mercer and plot key to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Point of No Return was Sinatra’s
last album for Capitol.

Note the strategic placement
of the Capitol Records logo
on the album cover.

Great Dream of Heaven

The title is that of Sam Shepard’s new book of short stories.  It is relevant to several of my recent journal entries.

This author’s own title also seems relevant.  Here is an excerpt from a web page on The Church of the Good Shepherd:

“This is the
oldest church in Beverly Hills, and over the years, this small house of
worship has been the local parish church for most of the Catholic movie
stars who live in Beverly Hills…. It has seen numerous celebrity
weddings and funerals. Although the church’s interior is modest (it
seats just 600), and its decor surprisingly simple, the Church of the
Good Shepherd has been featured in several Hollywood films: most
notably, it was the location for the funeral scene in the 1954 version
of ‘A Star is Born.’”

Today’s Birthday: Emily Dickinson

Complete Poems, 1924 

Part Four: Time and Eternity

LXXXIII

This world is not conclusion;
A sequel stands beyond….

 

Born Yesterday: Kirk Douglas 

From Douglas’s Climbing the Mountain: My Search for Meaning (Simon & Schuster, 1997) —

“Selling artwork, devoting time to charitable causes,
writing novels, are all worthwhile means of occupying your time when
good scripts aren’t coming your way.  But then, in the spring of
1993, one did.

It was called Wrestling Ernest Hemingway, a story of a growing friendship betwen two old men dealing with the twilight of their lives…. It was brilliant….

I called my agent… “So make the deal.”

A long pause.  “But the director wants to meet you.” ….

…. My agent called the next day. “She really likes you, Kirk… but… ah,” he started to stutter.

“What?”

“She wants Richard Harris.”

In the film of
Wrestling Ernest Hemingway 
as finally made,
Richard Harris dies on
Hemingway’s birthday.

Dead on October 25, 2002,
Picasso’s Birthday:

Actor Richard Harris  

A journal entry of October 25, 2002:

Wrestling Pablo Picasso

The old men know when an old man dies.
— Ogden Nash

A description of the title story
in Sam Shepard’s Great Dream of Heaven:

“Two old men who share a house are as close as a married couple
until a competition to wake up first in the morning and a mutual
fascination with a Denny’s waitress drive them apart.”

Three Coins in the Fountain

Mars

Victory

Sol Invictus

The reverse of three bronze coins
minted during Constantine’s early years

“Constantine like many of his predecessors had worshipped the Greek and Roman gods, particularly Apollo, Mars and Victory. This fact is evident in the portrayal of these gods on the earliest of Constantine’s coins. Yet surprisingly, even after his dream experience, and subsequent victory over Maxentius, it is recorded that he continued to worship these gods. Although the images of Apollo, Mars and Victory quickly disappeared from his coinage, later coins minted under Constantine shows that he likely continued to worship the sol invicta [sic] or ‘Unconquered Sun’ for 10 years or more after his dream experience. Yet, over a period of years, the experience of the sign, and the victory at the Milvian bridge, eventually led Constantine to favour and later to convert to the Christian faith.”

— Ross Nightingale, “The ‘Sign’ that Changed the Course of History,” in Ancient Coin Forum

“Three coins in the fountain,
Each one seeking happiness.
Thrown by three hopeful lovers,
Which one will the fountain bless?

Three hearts in the fountain,
Each heart longing for its home.
There they lie in the fountain
Somewhere in the heart of Rome.”

– Sinatra’s version of the 1954 song
(Lyrics by Sammy Cahn, music by Jule Styne)

Which one will the fountain bless?

In order to answer this theological conundrum, we need to know more about the unfamiliar god Sol Invictus.

A quick web search reveals that some fanatical Protestants believe that the Roman deities Sol Invictus and Mithra were virtually the same.  Of course, it is unwise to take the paranoid ravings of Protestants too seriously, but in this case they may be on to something.

The Catholic Church itself seems to identify Sol Invictus with Mithra:

“Sunday was kept holy in honour of Mithra…. The 25 December was observed as his birthday, the natalis invicti, the rebirth of the winter-sun, unconquered by the rigours of the season. A Mithraic community was not merely a religious congregation…”

— The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1911 edition.

Nihil Obstat, October 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor
Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York

It would seem, therefore, that as December 25 approaches we are preparing to celebrate the festival of Sol Invictus. This perhaps answers the theological riddle posed by Sammy Cahn.

From “Things Change,” starring Don Ameche:
“A big man knows the value of a small coin.”

Today’s site music celebrates
Cahn, Styne, Sinatra, and the spirit of the 1950′s.
Many thanks to Loyd’s Piano Music Page
for this excellent rendition of a Styne classic.

ART WARS: 

A Metaphysical State

Diane Keaton

Frank Sinatra

“Heaven is a state, a sort of metaphysical state.”

 — John O’Hara, Hope of Heaven, 1938

“I’ve always been enthralled by the notion that Time is an illusion, a trick our minds play in an attempt to keep things separate, without any reality of its own. My experience suggests that this is literally true, but not the kind of truth that can be acted upon….

I’m always sad and always happy. As someone says in Diane Keaton’s film ‘Heaven,’ ‘It’s kind of a lost cause, but it’s a great experience.’”

 — Charles Small, Harvard ’64 25th Anniv. Report, 1989

“As a child she would wait out her naptime like a prison sentence.  She would lie in bed and stare at the wallpaper pattern and wonder what would happen if there were no heaven.  She thought the universe would probably go on and on, spilling all over everything.  Heaven was kind of a hat on the universe, a lid that kept everything underneath it where it belonged.”

 — Carrie Fisher, Postcards from the Edge, 1987

Today’s site music illustrates 
the above philosophical remarks.

 
Lucero
 
From a Spanish-English dictionary:

lucero m. morning or evening star:
any bright star….
2. hole in a window panel for the
admission of light….
 
Sal a tu ventana,
que mi canto es para ti….
Lucero, lucero, lucero, lucero

— “Ya la ronda llega aquí“

 

 
Cross Window — Ex Cathedra
 
See In Mexico City, a Quiet Revelation,
in the New York Times of December 5.
The photo, from a different website, is
   of a room by the architect Luis Barragán.

From the Nobel Prize lecture of Octavio Paz on December 8, 1990 — twelve years ago today:

“Like every child I built emotional bridges in the imagination to link me to the world and to other people. I lived in a town on the outskirts of Mexico City, in an old dilapidated house that had a jungle-like garden and a great room full of books. First games and first lessons. The garden soon became the centre of my world; the library, an enchanted cave. I used to read and play with my cousins and schoolmates. There was a fig tree, temple of vegetation, four pine trees, three ash trees, a nightshade, a pomegranate tree, wild grass and prickly plants that produced purple grazes. Adobe walls. Time was elastic; space was a spinning wheel. All time, past or future, real or imaginary, was pure presence. Space transformed itself ceaselessly. The beyond was here, all was here: a valley, a mountain, a distant country, the neighbours’ patio. Books with pictures, especially history books, eagerly leafed through, supplied images of deserts and jungles, palaces and hovels, warriors and princesses, beggars and kings. We were shipwrecked with Sindbad and with Robinson, we fought with d’Artagnan, we took Valencia with the Cid. How I would have liked to stay forever on the Isle of Calypso! In summer the green branches of the fig tree would sway like the sails of a caravel or a pirate ship. High up on the mast, swept by the wind, I could make out islands and continents, lands that vanished as soon as they became tangible. The world was limitless yet it was always within reach; time was a pliable substance that weaved an unbroken present.”

Today’s site music is courtesy of the Sinatra MIDI Files. 

This space reserved for a glass slipper.

ART WARS:

Shall we read?

From Contact, by Carl Sagan:

  “You mean you could decode a picture hiding in pi
and it would be a mess of Hebrew letters?”
  “Sure.  Big black letters, carved in stone.”
  He looked at her quizzically.
  “Forgive me, Eleanor, but don’t you think
you’re being a mite too… indirect? 
You don’t belong to a silent order of Buddhist nuns. 
Why don’t you just tell your
story?”

From The Nation – Thailand
Sat Dec 7 19:36:00 EST 2002:

New Jataka books
blend ethics and art

Published on Dec 8, 2002

“The Ten Jataka, or 10 incarnations of the Lord Buddha before his enlightenment, are among the most fascinating religious stories….

His Majesty the King wrote a marvellous book on the second incarnation of the Lord Buddha…. It has become a classic, with the underlying aim of encouraging Thais to pursue the virtue of perseverance.

For her master’s degree at Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Arts, Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn wrote a dissertation related to the Ten Jataka of the Buddha. Now with the 4th Cycle Birthday of Princess Sirindhorn approaching on April 2, 2003, a group of artists, led by prominent painter Theeraphan Lorpaiboon, has produced a 10-volume set, the “Ten Jataka of Virtues”, as a gift to the Princess.

Once launched on December 25, the “Ten Jataka of Virtues” will rival any masterpiece produced in book form….”

“How much story do you want?” 
— George Balanchine