Cartoon Graveyard,
or Betty and the Third Eye

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

The New York Times, Jan. 21, 2003:

One of my favorite movie scenes is the entry into paradise, through a looking glass, of Kilgore Trout (played by Albert Finney) in "Breakfast of Champions."  Trout encounters a beautiful (indeed, angelic) maiden on the other side of the looking glass and asks of her, "Make me young again."  His wish is granted.  Those who wish to may imagine — through a glass, darkly — a great artist's entry into heaven with the aid of the very popular website Betty and Veronica.

PARENTAL ADVISORY:

The "Betty and Veronica" link above is more suited to Kilgore Trout's usual publisher,  The World Classics Library, than to, say, the Harvard Classics.  Since Betty and Veronica have been attending Riverdale High for about 60 years now, I think we can assume they are 18 by this time, and can appear in an adult website.  Their cartoonish appearance may be helpful to newcomers to paradise; it does not mean, as Paul Simon fears, that the afterlife consists only of cartoon characters. 

For further details, see I Corinthians 13:11-13.

Diablo Ballet

Thanks to Meghan for the following:

not going, not coming,
rooted, deep and still
not reaching out, not reaching in
just resting, at the center
a single jewel, the flawless crystal drop
in the blaze of its brilliance
the way beyond.

— Shih Te (c. 730)

It turns out that Shih Te ("Foundling") was the sidekick of Han Shan ("Cold Mountain").  Here are some relevant links:

• Literary Kicks: Han Shan
  
• The Story of Han Shan and Shih Te
  
• Han Shan and Shih Te, the Mad Monks

Thoughts of Robert Frost (see past two days' entries) lead to "Two Tramps in Mud Time," which in turn leads to Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder splitting wood in The Dharma Bums.

This in turn leads, via a search on "Kerouac" and "axe," to the sentence

"There's the grace of an axe handle 
 as good as an Eglevsky ballet,"

in Big Sur. 

Kerouac taught me when I was 16 and he is still teaching me now that I am 60.

Searching for "Eglevsky ballet" leads to this site on André Eglevsky, his work, his life, and his children.  A further search leads to his daughter Marina Eglevsky, who stages dance for the Diablo Ballet.

Born to Dance Marina Eglevsky and the Diablo Ballet — a rare and gifted pas de deux

Those who feel the above is too "arty" for them may nevertheless appreciate the movie by the same name: "Born to Dance" (1936), starring Eleanor Powell and James Stewart.

In the larger metaphorical sense, of course, Powell and Eglevsky are both part of the same dance... at the "still point" described so well by Shih Te. 

"just resting, at the center
a single jewel..."

"At the still point, there the dance is." — T. S. Eliot

From Marshall's Jewelers, Tucson — A Diamond-Cutter Sutra: The ideal cut is a mathematical formula for cutting diamonds to precise angles and proportions to maximize the reflection and refraction of light. In addition to these ideal proportions, the polish and symmetry of the diamond is done to the highest standards also. Only then does it qualify to receive the American Gem Society (AGS) "triple zero" rating. A "zero" rating is the most perfect rating that the AGS gives evaluating the cut, polish, and symmetry of the diamond. When a diamond receives the "zero" rating for each of these areas, (cut, polish, and symmetry), it gets three "zeros," hence the "triple zero" rating. Because of this attention to detail, it takes up to four times longer to cut a diamond to these standards than an "average" diamond. You may choose to compromise on color or clarity but to ensure the most brilliant diamond you should not compromise on cut.... The "triple zero" ideal cut guarantees you a magnificent balance of brilliance, sparkle, and fire.

Postscript of 1/25/03:

See also the obituary of Irene Diamond, ballet patron, for whom the New York City Ballet's "Diamond Project" is named.  Diamond died on January 21, 2003, the date of the above weblog entry.

Shine On, Robinson Jeffers

"...be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, 
      a clever servant, insufferable master.
There is the trap that catches noblest spirits,
     that caught — they say — God, when he walked on earth."
— Shine, Perishing Republic, by Robinson Jeffers

Robinson Jeffers died at Big Sur, California, on January 20, 1962 — a year to the day after Robert Frost spoke at the Kennedy inauguration.

"The poetry of Robinson Jeffers shines with a diamond's brilliance when he depicts Nature's beauty and magnificence.   His verse also flashes with a diamond's hardness when he portrays human pain and folly."
— Gary Suttle  

"Praise Him, He hath conferred aesthetic distance
Upon our appetites, and on the bloody
Mess of our birthright, our unseemly need,
Imposed significant form. Through Him the brutes
Enter the pure Euclidean kingdom of number...."
— Howard Nemerov, 
   Grace To Be Said at the Supermarket 

"Across my foundering deck shone 
A beacon, an eternal beam. | Flesh fade, and mortal trash 
Fáll to the resíduary worm; | world's wildfire, leave but ash: 
In a flash, at a trumpet crash, 
I am all at once what Christ is |, since he was what I am, and 
Thís Jack, jóke, poor pótsherd, | patch, matchwood,
    immortal diamond, 
Is immortal diamond."
— Gerard Manley Hopkins,
    That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection

"In the last two weeks, I've been returning to Hopkins.  Even in the 'world's wildfire,' he asserts that 'this Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,/Is immortal diamond.' A comfort."
— Michael Gerson, head White House speechwriter,
    in Vanity Fair, May 2002, page 162

"There's none but truth can stead you.  Christ is truth."
— Gerard Manley Hopkins

"The rock cannot be broken.  It is the truth."
— Wallace Stevens 

"My ghost you needn't look for; it is probably
Here, but a dark one, deep in the granite...."
— Robinson Jeffers, Tor House

On this date in 1993, the inauguration day of William Jefferson Clinton, Audrey Hepburn died.

"...today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully...."
— Maya Angelou, January 20, 1993

"So, purposing each moment to retire,
She linger'd still. Meantime, across the moors,
Had come young Porphyro, with heart on fire"
— John Keats, The Eve of St. Agnes (January 20), IX

Top view of ordinary diamond

Top view of Hearts On Fire diamond

Advertising Copy: What you see with a Hearts On Fire diamond is an unequalled marriage of math and physics, resulting in the world's most perfectly cut diamond.

"Eightpointed symmetrical signs are ancient symbols for the Venus goddess or the planet Venus as either the Morning star or the Evening star."
— Symbols.com

"Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave.  Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame."
— Song of Solomon

"The last words from the people in the towers and on the planes, over and over again, were 'I love you.'  Over and over again, the message was the same, 'I love you.' .... Perhaps this is the loudest chorus from The Rock:  we are learning just how powerful love really is, even in the face of death."
— The Rev. Kenneth E. Kovacs

"Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again."
— The Who 

See also my note, "Bright Star," of October 23, 2002.

Literature and Geography "Literature begins with geography." — Attributed to Robert Frost

The Maori Court at the Wanganui Museum

"Cullinane College is a Catholic co-educational college, set to open in Wanganui (New Zealand) on the 29th of January, 2003."

The 29th of January will be the 40th anniversary of the death of Saint Robert Frost.

New Zealand, perhaps the most beautiful country on the planet, is noted for being the setting of the film version of Lord of the Rings, which was written by a devout Catholic, J. R. R. Tolkien. 

Here is a rather Catholic meditation on life and death in Tolkien's work:

Frodo: "...He deserves death."

Gandalf: "Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement."

Personally, I prefer Clint Eastwood's version of this dialogue:

The Schofield Kid: "Well, I guess they had it coming."

William Munny: "We all have it coming, Kid."

For other New Zealand themes, see Alfred Bester's novels The Stars My Destination and The Deceivers.

The original title of The Stars My Destination was Tyger! Tyger! after Blake's poem. 

For more on fearful symmetry, see the work of Marston Conder, professor of mathematics at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. 

 

The Walk to Paradise Garden

The Braidwoods

The Walk to Paradise Garden

The New York Times, Friday, Jan. 17, 2003:

Mr. and Mrs. Braidwood

By STUART LAVIETES 

Robert J. Braidwood, a University of Chicago archaeologist who uncovered evidence of the beginnings of agriculture and the subsequent rise of civilization in the Middle East, died on Wednesday [Jan. 15, 2003] in Chicago. He was 95.

From close to the beginning of his career, Dr. Braidwood worked in partnership with his wife, Linda S. Braidwood, also an archaeologist. She died several hours later on Wednesday in the same hospital. She was 93. The couple lived in LaPorte, Ind.

Related reading:

• For the Time Being, by Annie Dillard
  
• All the Strange Hours, by Loren Eiseley
  
  

ART WARS
At the Still Point

"At the still point, there the dance is."

— T. S. Eliot in Four Quartets

Humphrey Carpenter in The Inklings, his book on the Christian writers J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and Charles Williams, says that

"Eliot by his own admission took the 'still point of the turning world' in Burnt Norton from the Fool in Williams's The Greater Trumps."

— The Inklings, Ballantine Books, 1981, p. 106

Carpenter says Williams maintained that

It is the Christian's duty to perceive "the declared pattern of the universe" — the "eternal dance" of Williams's story The Greater Trumps — and to act according to it.

— Paraphrase of Carpenter, pp. 111-112

"The sun is not yet risen, and if the Fool moves there he comes invisibly, or perhaps in widespread union with the light of the moon which is the reflection of the sun.  But if the Tarots hold, as has been dreamed, the message which all things in all places and times have also been dreamed to hold, then perhaps there was meaning in the order as in the paintings; the tale of the cards being completed when the mystery of the sun has opened in the place of the moon, and after that the trumpets cry in the design which is called the Judgement, and the tombs are broken, and then in the last mystery of all the single figure of what is called the World goes joyously dancing in a state beyond moon and sun, and the number of the Trumps is done.  Save only for that which has no number and is called the Fool, because mankind finds it folly till it is known.  It is sovereign or it is nothing, and if it is nothing then man was born dead."

— The Greater Trumps, by Charles Williams, Ch. 14

If we must have Christians telling stories, let them write like Charles Williams.

Note that although Williams says the Fool Tarot card has no number, it is in fact often numbered 0. See

"The Fool as Zero."

See also Sequel — about the work, life, and afterlife of Stan Rice, husband of Anne Rice (author of The Vampire Chronicles) — and the following story from today's N.Y. Times:

The New York Times, Jan. 16, 2003: 'Dance of the Vampires,' a Broadway Failure, Is Closing By JESSE McKINLEY In one of the costliest failures in Broadway history, the producers of "Dance of the Vampires," a $12 million camp musical at the Minskoff Theater, will close the show on Jan. 25, having lost their entire investment. Its gross for the week ending on Sunday [Jan. 12], $459,784, was its lowest, and that, finally, was the kiss of death for the show.

The death and arrival at heaven's gate
of The Producers' producer, Sidney Glazier,
on Dec. 14, 2002, is described in the web page
Eight is a Gate.
 

Mean Streets

The title of tonight's "The West Wing" episode, "The Long Goodbye," refers to a phrase that the sentimental do-gooders of the Democratic party apparently now use to refer to senility.   I find the phrase of more interest as it is used in the work of Raymond Chandler, where it has more to do with alcoholism than with Alzheimer's.

Another memorable phrase from Chandler is found in his essay, "The Simple Art of Murder":

"...down these mean streets a man must go
who is not himself mean...."

The phrase also occurs in the works of C. S. Lewis in an extended parable about Heaven and Hell:

The Great Divorce, Chapter One:

"I seemed to be standing in a busy queue by the side of a long, mean street. Evening was just closing in and it was raining. I had been wandering for hours in similar mean streets, always in the rain and always in evening twilight. Time seemed to have paused on that dismal moment when only a few shops have lit up and it is not yet dark enough for their windows to look cheering. And just as the evening never advanced to night, so my walking had never brought me to the better parts of the town."

The most interesting part of this very interesting tale is summarized in an article on the work of Lewis:

"In the last chapter, Lewis sees a great assembly of motionless figures standing... around a silver table, watching the actvities of little figures that resembled chessmen:

'And these chessman are men and women as they appear to themselves and to one another in this world. And the silver table is Time. And those who stand and watch are the immortal souls of these same men and women.'"

It is perhaps not completely irrelevant that Humphrey Bogart, who played Chandler's detective "who is not himself mean," loved chess and was born on Christmas Day.

A related religious meditation:

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil, for I am the meanest son of a bitch in the valley."

— Karl Cullinane

in The Silver Crown, by Joel Rosenberg

Conversations in Hell

Part I: Locating Hell

"Noi siam venuti al loco ov' i' t'ho detto
           che tu vedrai le genti dolorose
        c'hanno perduto il ben de l'intelletto."

— Dante, Inferno, Canto 3, 16-18

"We have come to where I warned you
       we would find
Those wretched souls who no longer have 
The intellectual benefits of the mind."

— Dante, Hell, Canto 3, 16-18

From a Harvard student's weblog:

Heard in Mather  I hope you get gingivitis You want me to get oral cancer?! Goodnight fartface Turd. Turd. Turd. Turd. Turd. Make your own waffles!! Blah blah blah starcraft blah blah starcraft blah starcraft. It's da email da email. And some blue hair! Oohoohoo Izod! 10 gigs! Yeah it smells really bad. Only in the stairs though. Starcraft blah blah Starcraft fartface. Yeah it's hard. You have to get a bunch of battle cruisers. 40 kills! So good! Oh ho ho grunt grunt squeal.  I'm getting sick again. You have a final tomorrow? In What?! Um I don't even know. Next year we're draggin him there and sticking the needle in ourselves. 

" ... one more line / unravelling from the dark design / spun by God and Cotton Mather"

— Robert Lowell

Part II: The Call of Stories

From a website on college fund-raising: 

• “The people who come to us bring their stories. They hope they tell them well enough so that we understand the truth of their lives.”—Robert Coles, Harvard professor, The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination

• “If there’s anything worth calling theology, it is listening to people’s stories, listening to them and cherishing them.”—Mary Pellauer, quoted in Kathleen Norris’ Dakota: A Spiritual Geography

From a website on "The West Wing":

THE LONG GOODBYE   
9pm 2003-01-15    

"ALL NEW!

In a special episode guest written by playwright Jon Robin Baitz, C.J. (Allison Janney) reluctantly returns to Dayton, Ohio, to speak at her 20th high school class reunion..."

From a website illustrating language in Catholic religious stories:

"Headquartered in Dayton, Ohio, the Sisters of the Precious Blood is a Catholic religious congregation..."

From a Catholic religious story by J. R. R. Tolkien:

"It shone now as if verily it was
 wrought of living fire.
'Precious, precious, precious!' Gollum cried.
'My Precious! O my Precious!'"

From a website on Philip Pullman, author of His Dark Materials: 

"'Stories are the most important thing in the world.  Without stories, we wouldn't be human beings at all."

From the same website, a short story:

"Philip Pullman was born in Norwich on

19th October 1946."

Part III: My Story

For a different story, see my weblog of

19th October 2002:

Saturday, October 19, 2002 What is Truth?

Remarks on Day 14 of
the Year of Our Lord 2003

On this date —

Alfred Tarski was born in 1902 in Warsaw, and

Kurt Friedrich Gödel died in 1978 in Princeton.

What is Truth?

"What is called 'losing' in chess may constitute winning in another game."

Cited in "A Note on Wittgenstein's 'Notorious Paragraph' about the Gödel Theorem," by Juliet Floyd (Boston University) and Hilary Putnam (Harvard University), Journal of Philosophy (November 2000), 45 (11): 624-632.  

See also

Juliet Floyd's "Prose versus proof : Wittgenstein on Gödel, Tarski and truth," Philosophia Mathematica  3, vol. 9 (2001): 901-928,

and

Juliet Floyd's "The Rule of the Mathematical: Wittgenstein's Later Discussions." PhD Dissertation, Harvard University, 1990. Abstract in Dissertation Abstracts International (June 1991), 51 (12A): 4146-A:

"My thesis aims to defend Wittgenstein from the charges of benighted arrogance traditionally levelled against him."

Romeo: O, she doth teach
the torches to burn bright!
— "Romeo and Juliet," Act One, Scene V

  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (revised edition, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1978)

Day 14 —

The More I Learn

My heart's been cared for
My heart's been used
It only makes me more confused
Just when I'm sure I've gotten wise
That's when I realize
The more I learn
The less I understand about love

It'll drive you crazy or make you sane
Moment by moment
It's a brand new game
The more I learn
The less I understand about love

— Ronna Reeves, 1992 
   (Song by Steve Dean/Karen Stanley)