Born on this date:
William Butler Yeats.

"Surely some revelation
  is at hand" — W. B. Yeats

Behold a Pale Horse:
A link in memory of Gregory Peck.

In Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion wrote that

"The oral history of Los Angeles
is written in piano bars."

Today's site music, a piano rendition of "Speak Low," from "One Touch of Venus," was suggested by

• the "black triangle" theme of Wednesday's entry and by
  
• the name "Amy Hollywood." 

Ms. Hollywood has an essay in the April 2003 Princeton journal Theology Today.

My own theological interests (besides those expressed in the "black triangle" link above) are much closer to those in a 2001 First Things essay, The End of Endings. 

 Washington Square Press paperback, 1981, page 222

Theology Today

From yesterday's New York Times:

As Spinoza noted, "If a triangle could speak, it would say... that God is eminently triangular."

— "Giving God a Break" by Nicholas D. Kristof

The figure above is by 
Robert Anton Wilson.

From today's New York Times:

"The film's personal, impious God embodies some central premises of black theology."

— Samuel G. Freedman on Morgan Freeman as God in "Bruce Almighty"

The Triangular God

From the New York Times of June 10, 2003:

As Spinoza noted, "If a triangle could speak, it would say... that God is eminently triangular."

— "Giving God a Break," by Nicholas D. Kristof

Related material:

The figure above is by
Robert Anton Wilson.

From "The Cocktail Party," Act One, Scene One, by T. S. Eliot:

UNIDENTIFIED GUEST [Sings]:

Tooryooly toory-iley
   What's the matter with One Eyed Riley?

[Exit.]

JULIA:  Edward, who is that dreadful man? 

From T. S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950 (Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1952), page 144:

"The end is where we start from."

From the end of that same book:

"And me be-in' the One-Eyed Ri-ley"

For more on this song, see

Reilly's Daughter (with midi tune),

One-Eyed Riley (adults only), and

Riley's Daughter question (forum).

See also my previous journal entry of June 6, 2003

and the perceptive analysis of the Shakti-Shiva symbol that I quoted on May 25, 2003.

Here is a note from Sept. 15, 1984, for those who would like to
block that metaphor.

See also Block Designs from the Cabinet of Dr. Montessori and Sacerdotal Jargon.

Of Time and the River

Today is the feast day of Saint Gerard Manley Hopkins, "immortal diamond."

"At that instant he saw, in one blaze of light, an image of unutterable conviction, the reason why the artist works and lives and has his being--the reward he seeks--the only reward he really cares about, without which there is nothing. It is to snare the spirits of mankind in nets of magic, to make his life prevail through his creation, to wreak the vision of his life, the rude and painful substance of his own experience, into the congruence of blazing and enchanted images that are themselves the core of life, the essential pattern whence all other things proceed, the kernel of eternity."

— Thomas Wolfe, Of Time and the River

Thomas Wolfe

"entered the university at Chapel Hill at fifteen 'an awkward, unhappy misfit.' By the time he graduated, he was editor of the college newspaper...."

Jeff MacNelly, who died on this date in the Year of Our Lord 2000,

"in 1977 started drawing the comic strip 'Shoe'.... The strip was named in honor of the legendary Jim Shumaker, for whom MacNelly worked at the Chapel Hill Weekly." 

From my Monday, June 2, 2003 entry:

Two quotations from "The Diamond Project":

"We all know that something is eternal," the Stage Manager says. "And it ain't houses and it ain't names, and it ain't earth, and it ain't even stars—everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings."
— John Lahr, review of "Our Town" 

"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

Here are some other thoughts from the same date, but a different time, fictional time, Faulkner time:

June Second, 1910

Where the shadow of the bridge fell I could see down for a long way, but not as far as the bottom. When you leave a leaf in water a long time after a while the tissue will be gone and the delicate fibers waving slow as the motion of sleep. They dont touch one another, no matter how knotted up they once were, no matter how close they lay once to the bones. And maybe when He says Rise the eyes will come floating up too, out of the deep quiet and the sleep, to look on glory.

— William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury

The concluding link from my June 2, 2003, entry furnishes a clue to the timelessness of Quentin Compson's thoughts above:

Glory... Song of Songs 8. 7-8

From the King James Bible's rendition of the Song of Songs:

8:7  Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.
8:8  We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts: what shall we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for?

For Quentin Compson's thoughts on his little sister Caddy, consult the online hypertext edition of

Blanche's Waltz

For the birthday of Miss Jessica Tandy

Wien, Wien, nur du allein
Sollst stets die Stadt meiner Träume sein!
Dort, wo die alten Häuser stehn,
Dort, wo die lieblichen Mädchen gehn!
Wien, Wien, nur du allein
Sollst stets die Stadt meiner Träume sein!
Dort, wo ich glücklich und selig bin,
Ist Wien, ist Wien, mein Wien!

The web page where I found today's midi of "Wien, Wien, nur du allein" offers a view of the pulpit of the Stephansdom in Vienna.  From Hermann Weyl's Symmetry:

"Here (Fig. 41) is the gracefully designed staircase of the pulpit of the Stephan's dome in Vienna; a triquetrum alternates with a swastika-like wheel."

The closest to Weyl's Figure 41 that I can find on the Web is located here.

Perhaps Stanley Kowalski had a lower opinion than Blanche DuBois of swastika-like wheels.

SKEPTIC, or
Beware of...
Jews Telling Stories

"Philosophers ponder the idea of identity: what it is to give something a name on Monday and have it respond to that name on Friday."
— Bernard Holland, C12, N.Y. Times, 5/20/96

From my entry of Monday, June 2, 2003:

William Holden and Martha Scott
in "Our Town," 1940 

Holden            Scott

From a website titled Child of a Voice: 

"The Talmud says, even in a time when there is no more prophecy there can still be the Daughter of a Voice.

The Tosefot explain: this is like the sound the echo of a hammer makes when it strikes something, and the sound echoes back from mountains. Not the Voice, but a daughter, a child of it.

Not the sound but the echo of a sound. Not the prophecy from God in its purest way, but in a less pure way.

Now because of our sins there is no more prophecy but in a time when there is no prophecy there can be Daughter of a Voice."

Copyright Abraham Mezrich 2003

From a July 1999 review of a novel:

"The good news is that this is perhaps Ben Mezrich’s finest thriller. The irony is that he used a pen name on it."

Regime Change
at the New York Times:
With Honors

Departing New York Times executive editor
Howell Raines:

"Remember, when a great story breaks out,
go like hell."

From the date "Good Will Hunting" was released:

Postscript of June 5, 2003:

"...while the scientist sees everything that happens in one point of space, the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time ... all forming an instantaneous and transparent organism of events...."

— Vladimir Nabokov

Fearful Meditation, Part II —
The Four Last Things

"Where is Evelyn Waugh when you need him?"
— Roger Kimball, "Minimalist Fantasies" 

"Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell —
known collectively in the Catholic world as
the Four Last Things. They would have
formed the basis for a course of
uncomfortable meditations...."
— A Companion to Evelyn Waugh's
Brideshead Revisited, by David Cliffe

Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell.

Click on pictures for details.

Fearful Meditation —

A follow-up to yesterday
afternoon's entry of

O fearful meditation! Where, alack,
Shall time's best jewel from time's chest lie hid?

— Shakespeare, Sonnet 65

Pop Culture's answer:

"Flashes of fire,
a raging flame!"
— Song of Solomon

Click on the album title "0304" for details.

A different answer:

Click on the date "03/04" for details.

Solomon's Seal —

From the New York Times of May (Mental Health Month) 31, 2003:

Martha Scott,
Original Emily in "Our Town,"
Dies at 88

By DOUGLAS MARTIN

Martha Scott, who created the role of the sweet, ethereal Emily in the original Broadway production of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" and was nominated for an Oscar for repeating it in the film version, died on Wednesday [May 28, 2003] in Los Angeles. She was 88.

United Artists

Martha Scott with William Holden
in the 1940 film of "Our Town."

A quotation from Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon:

"Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you."

Two quotations from "The Diamond Project":

"We all know that something is eternal," the Stage Manager says. "And it ain't houses and it ain't names, and it ain't earth, and it ain't even stars—everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings."
— John Lahr, review of "Our Town" 

"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