School Book Depository
"Many people look at the Kennedy assassination as a turning point, when people started realizing and thinking and believing their government would lie to them and lie to them repeatedly," said Gary Mack, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas.
Better late than never.
Just Say NO
 |  |
For more on the above "spider" symbol, see
ART WARS for Trotsky's Birthday
(Oct. 26, 2003), Parts I and II
and the site from which
the above figure is taken,
For some Chinese poetic justice, see
Library of Paradise, and
See, too, the Chinese character for "end"
used to sell the work of Ian Fleming:
Note, in Endings and Beginnings, the strong resemblance between this character and the name of the Chinese-American architect of the Robert Frost Library at Amherst College. Then meditate on the following passage by Amherst graduate Stephen Mitchell:
“We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle
and knows,”
Robert Frost wrote,
looking in from the outside.
Looking out from the inside,
Chuang-tzu wrote,
“When we understand, we are at
the center of the circle,
and there we sit while Yes and No
chase each other
around the circumference.”
A view of the Robert Frost Library
from the inside is available in the entry
mentioned above.
See, too, my entry
of July 28, 2002.
November Oscar
From weebay.com:
 |  |
November This nautical | Oscar This nautical |
(See previous entry.)
Chinese Theatre
Epic Records released a new Michael Jackson album, "Number Ones," on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2003.
From Those Were the Days:
On this date in...
"1984 - The largest crowd to see the unveiling of a Hollywood Walk-of-Fame star turned out as Michael Jackson got his piece of the sidewalk right in front of Mann’s Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles.
1971 - Isaac Hayes of Memphis, TN, got his first #1 hit as the 'Theme from Shaft' began a two-week stay at the top of the charts."
The above two Chinese characters
mean "Shaft One," according to
The Source:
Hayes won an Oscar for best song.
Staying the Course
"However flawed the case for invading Iraq may have been, the premature withdrawal of U.S. military forces would not only be a humiliating defeat for the United States but a betrayal of the hopes of the Iraqi people...."
-- "Staying the Course," editorial in America, the Jesuit weekly, Nov. 24, 2003
"...all means to prevent procreation are illicit. This includes temporary or permanent sterilization, chemicals (like birth control pills or foams), mechanical devices (like the condom or diaphragm) or premature withdrawal."
-- "The Wisdom of Humanae Vitae," by Father Jay Scott Newman
"This is a perfect example of what my father calls 'thinking with your dick.' "
-- Susanna Moore, author of In the Cut
Today's birthday: Meg Ryan, star of the film version of In the Cut.
See also the previous entry.
Total Recall:
in which Philip K. Dick
meets Joan Didion yet again
From Joan Didion's new work on California history, Where I Was From:
"There was never just the golden dream of riches and bountiful nature, but always a scene of exploitation and false promises, indifference and ruthlessness, a kind of hollow core."
 |  |
Hollow no more.
Inaugural Poem for California:
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Wir kannten nicht sein unerhörtes Haupt,
darin die Augenäpfel reiften. Aber
sein Torso glüht noch wie ein Kandelaber,
in dem sein Schauen, nur zurückgeschraubt,
sich hält und glänzt. Sonst könnte nicht der Bug
der Brust dich blenden, und im leisen Drehen
der Lenden könnte nicht ein Lächeln gehen
zu jener Mitte, die die Zeugung trug.
Sonst stünde dieser Stein entstellt und kurz
unter der Schultern durchsichtigem Sturz
und flimmerte nicht so wie Raubtierfelle;
und bräche nicht aus allen seinen Rändern
aus wie ein Stern: denn da ist keine Stelle,
die dich nicht sieht. Du musst dein Leben ändern.
Illustration:
See also
Philip K. Dick Meets Joan Didion,
The Empty Center, and
Translation of Rilke by Stephen Mitchell:
We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.
Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:
would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
Russell Crowe as Santa's Helper
From The Age, Nov. 17, 2003:
"Russell Crowe's period naval epic has been relegated to second place at the US box office by an elf raised by Santa's helpers at the North Pole."
From A Midsummer Night's Dream:
"The lunatic,¹ the lover,² and the poet³
Are of imagination all compact."
1 | 2 | 3 |
In acceping a British Film Award for his work in A Beautiful Mind, Crowe said that
"Richard Harris, one of the finest of this profession, recently brought to my attention the verse of Patrick Kavanagh:
'To be a poet and not know the trade,
To be a lover and repel all women,
Twin ironies by which
great saints are made,
The agonising
pincer jaws of heaven.' "
A theological image both more pleasant and more in keeping with the mathematical background of A Beautiful Mind is the following:
This picture, from a site titled Strange and Complex, illustrates a one-to-one correspondence between the points of the complex plane and all the points of the sphere except for the North Pole.
To complete the correspondence (to, in Shakespeare's words, make the sphere's image "all compact"), we may adjoin a "point at infinity" to the plane -- the image, under the revised correspondence, of the North Pole.
For related poetry, see Stevens's "A Primitive Like an Orb."
For more on the point at infinity, see the conclusion of Midsummer Eve's Dream.
For Crowe's role as Santa's helper, consider how he has helped make known the poetry of Patrick Kavanagh, and see Kavanagh's "Advent":
O after Christmas† we'll have
no need to go searching....
... Christ comes with a January flower.
† i.e. Christ Mass... as, for instance, performed by the six Jesuits who were murdered in El Salvador on this date in 1989.
The Empty Center
From Stephen Mitchell, foreword to
The Enlightened Heart:
An Anthology of Sacred Poetry:
“We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle
and knows,”
Robert Frost wrote,
looking in from the outside.
Looking out from the inside,
Chuang-tzu wrote,
“When we understand, we are at
the center of the circle,
and there we sit while Yes and No
chase each other
around the circumference.”
This anonymous center—
which is called God
in Jewish, Christian, and Moslem cultures,
and Tao, Self, or Buddha
in the great Eastern Traditions—
is the realest of realities.
From Wallace Stevens's
A Primitive Like an Orb:
The essential poem
at the center of things....
We do not prove
the existence of the poem.
It is something seen and known
in lesser poems.
From Namkaran Samskar:
There is only one center in existence;
the ancients used to call it
Tao, Dharma, God.
Those words have become old now;
you can call it Truth.
There is only one center of existence.
From the
Empty Center:
From Friday's 2:56 AM entry -- Philip K. Dick, "Sun at the top.
"Do you know "Yes," Hawthorne said. "It's Chung Fu," Juliana said. Margo Jefferson in "When a classical text is modernized, |
Today's previous entry, "Aes Triplex," is actually from 1:48 PM EST yesterday. (It was posted to my alternate site, log24.com, since log24.net was down for Xanga maintenance.) "Aes Triplex" deals with image and reality.
Its final link, to the heart of Rome, leads to Julius Caesar.
A related review in today's New York Times:
"We live in a media maelstrom, and the Moonwork theater company's 'Julius Caesar' comes hurtling toward us right from its center. This production, at the Connelly Theater in the East Village through Nov. 23, is set in the here and now.
'Julius Caesar' is about politics, rhetoric and power; about manipulation of a nation's image and its people; about conspiracy, murder and the war that leads to a new regime. What play is better suited for our times?"
Recent Comments