The Pleasure of Books

I add, for the sake of remembering this wonderful essay in the future, a Longfellow's "My Books":

Sadly as some old mediæval knight
Gazed at the arms he could no longer wield,
The sword two-handed and the shining shield
Suspended in the hall, and full in sight,
While secret longings for the lost delight
Of tourney or adventure in the field
Came over him, and tears but half concealed
Trembled and fell upon his beard of white,
So I behold these books upon their shelf,
My ornaments and arms of other days;
Not wholly useless, though no longer used,
For they remind me of my other self,
Younger and stronger, and the pleasant ways
In which I walked, now clouded and confused.

On to William Lyon Phelps brilliant essay, "The Pleasure of Books":

"The habit of reading is one of the greatest resources of mankind; and we enjoy reading books that belong to us much more than if they are borrowed. A borrowed book is like a guest in the house; it must be treated with punctiliousness, with a certain considerate formality. You must see that it sustains no damage; it must not suffer while under your roof. You cannot leave it carelessly, you cannot mark it, you cannot turn down the pages, you cannot use it familiarly. And then, some day, although this is seldom done, you really ought to return it.

But your own books belong to you; you treat them with that affectionate intimacy that annihilates formality. Books are for use, not for show; you should own no book that you are afraid to mark up, or afraid to place on the table, wide open and face down. A good reason for marking favorite passages in books is that this practice enables you to remember more easily the significant sayings, to refer to them quickly, and then in later years, it is like visiting a forest where you once blazed a trail. You have the pleasure of going over the old ground, and recalling both the intellectual scenery and your own earlier self.

Everyone should begin collecting a private library in youth; the instinct of private property, which is fundamental in human beings, can here be cultivated with every advantage and no evils. One should have one's own bookshelves, which should not have doors, glass windows, or keys; they should be free and accessible to the hand as well as to the eye. The best of mural decorations is books; they are more varied in color and appearance than any wallpaper, they are more attractive in design, and they have the prime advantage of being separate personalities, so that if you sit alone in the room in the firelight, you are surrounded with intimate friends. The knowledge that they are there in plain view is both stimulating and refreshing. You do not have to read them all. Most of my indoor life is spent in a room containing six thousand books; and I have a stock answer to the invariable question that comes from strangers. "Have you read all of these books?"

"Some of them twice." This reply is both true and unexpected.

There are of course no friends like living, breathing, corporeal men and women; my devotion to reading has never made me a recluse. How could it? Books are of the people, by the people, for the people. Literature is the immortal part of history; it is the best and most enduring part of personality. But book-friends have this advantage over living friends; you can enjoy the most truly aristocratic society in the world whenever you want it. The great dead are beyond our physical reach, and the great living are usually almost as inaccessible; as for our personal friends and acquaintances, we cannot always see them. Perchance they are asleep, or away on a journey. But in a private library, you can at any moment converse with Socrates or Shakespeare or Carlyle or Dumas or Dickens or Shaw or Barrie or Galsworthy. And there is no doubt that in these books you see these men at their best. They wrote for you. They "laid themselves out," they did their ultimate best to entertain you, to make a favorable impression. You are necessary to them as an audience is to an actor; only instead of seeing them masked, you look into their innermost heart of heart."

1933

Francis Appleton

Another woman (like Natalya Pushkina and Helen of Troy) who changed the world with sheer, incomprehensible beauty.

Longfellow proposed to Francis Appleton the first day he met her.  She was his muse, whether she liked it or not.  Longfellow had to wait through seven years of nos, during which time he published a book about his

unsuccessful attempts in the form of a thinly-veiled travel romance. Hyperion (1839) did not help his cause; Fanny, who was a woman of good taste, had this to say about it:

There are really some exquisite things in this book, though it is desultory, objectless, a thing of shreds and patches like the author’s mind... The hero is evidently himself, and... the heroine is wooed (like some persons I know have been) by the reading of German ballads in her unwilling ears.

The romance of this story is mind-blowing; every letter, every poem, every anecdote becomes a testimony to the power of love to inspire and transcend.  I cannot find in history and literature a more profound story or more pure example of true love.

When she died in 1861, tragically and prematurely as a result of circumstances too awful to relate, Longfellow was destroyed.  He coped by translating Dante.  He handed himself over to the Italian bard who's love for Beatrice Portinari superseded death; Dante's epic puts the poet as the protagonist, and when he finally makes it through hell, the lovely Beatrice guides him to heaven.  It was not until eighteen years later that Longfellow wrote his only poem about the loss of Francis (reproduced below) -- but it is perhaps better to look at all the poetry she inspired in life rather than the single one he could hardly bring himself to write after her death.  This poem exists well within the realm of the infandum.

The Cross of Snow

In the long, sleepless watches of the night,
   A gentle face — the face of one long dead —
   Looks at me from the wall, where round its head
   The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.
Here in this room she died; and soul more white
   Never through martyrdom of fire was led
   To its repose; nor can in books be read
   The legend of a life more benedight.
There is a mountain in the distant West
   That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines
   Displays a cross of snow upon its side.
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
   These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
   And seasons, changeless since the day she died.

Rossetti's Beata Beatrix (ca. 1864-70)

Railroaded

...business success--money-getting...comes from a rather low instinct. Certainly  so far as my observation goes, it is rarely met with in combination with the finer or more interesting traits of character.  I have known, and known tolerably well, a good many "successful" men--"big" financially--men famous during the last half-century; and a less interesting crowd I do not care to encounter.  Not one that I have ever known would I care to meet again, either in this world or the next; nor is one of them associated in my mind with the idea of humor, thought or refinement.  A set of mere money-getters and traders, they were essentially unattractive and uninteresting.
--Charles Francis Adams

The Flowering of New England

For Cambridge had ripened, in these few short years, as a well-tended graden ripens in June.  All in a mist of birds and honeysuckle, the literary mind had put forth shoots.  Thoughts were growing, books were growing under the quiet boughs of the ancient elm-trees, in the fragrant shadows of the locusts, the perfume of the daphne and the lilac.  Robins darted down the leafy paths, orioles swung on their nests; one heard the murmur of bees and doves and the bobolink's song in the meadows along the river. The scent of the syringa filled the air.  These were the scholastic shades that poets had always loved; and books, whether in verse or prose, were springing from the Cambridge mind, thick and fast as the grass of the Cambridge door-yards...Everyone in Cambridge appeared to be writing a book.
-- Van Wyck Brooks

Marcus Aurelius' Daily Affirmation

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest  jealous, and surly.  They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that he wrongdoer has a nature related to my own—not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness.  Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him.  We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower.  To obstruct each other is unnatural.  To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions.

It is a worthwhile exercise to write oneself such an affirmation, a daily reminder of one's place in the universe, and of one's weaknesses for the simple sake of self-betterment and resolution.  I keep this quote next to Franklin's 13 tenets.

1. TEMPERANCE. 

Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

2. SILENCE. 

Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

3. ORDER. 

Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

4. RESOLUTION. 

Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.

5. FRUGALITY. 

Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.

6. INDUSTRY. 

Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.

7. SINCERITY. 

Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

8. JUSTICE. 

Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.

9. MODERATION. 

Avoid extreams; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.

10. CLEANLINESS. 

Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.

11. TRANQUILLITY. 

Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

12. CHASTITY. 

Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.

13. HUMILITY. 

Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

Franklin's Free and Easy Society had a list of worthwhile questions to be asked again and again:

1. 1.      Have you met with any thing in the author you last read, remarkable, or suitable to be communicated to the Junto? particularly in history, morality, poetry, physics, travels, mechanic arts, or other parts of knowledge?

2.      What new story have you lately heard agreeable for telling in conversation?

3.      Hath any citizen in your knowledge failed in his business lately, and what have you heard of the cause?

4.      Have you lately heard of any citizen’s thriving well, and by what means?

5.      Have you lately heard how any present rich man, here or elsewhere, got his estate?

6.      Do you know of any fellow citizen, who has lately done a worthy action, deserving praise and imitation? or who has committed an error proper for us to be warned against and avoid?

7.      What unhappy effects of intemperance have you lately observed or heard? of imprudence? of passion? or of any other vice or folly?

8.      What happy effects of temperance? of prudence? of moderation? or of any other virtue?

9.      Have you or any of your acquaintance been lately sick or wounded? If so, what remedies were used, and what were their effects?

10.  Who do you know that are shortly going [on] voyages or journeys, if one should have occasion to send by them?

11.  Do you think of any thing at present, in which the Junto may be serviceable to mankind? to their country, to their friends, or to themselves?

12.  Hath any deserving stranger arrived in town since last meeting, that you heard of? and what have you heard or observed of his character or merits? and whether think you, it lies in the power of the Junto to oblige him, or encourage him as he deserves?

13.  Do you know of any deserving young beginner lately set up, whom it lies in the power of the Junto any way to encourage?

14.  Have you lately observed any defect in the laws, of which it would be proper to move the legislature an amendment? Or do you know of any beneficial law that is wanting?

15.  Have you lately observed any encroachment on the just liberties of the people?

16.  Hath any body attacked your reputation lately? and what can the Junto do towards securing it?

17.  Is there any man whose friendship you want, and which the Junto, or any of them, can procure for you?

18.  Have you lately heard any member’s character attacked, and how have you defended it?

19.  Hath any man injured you, from whom it is in the power of the Junto to procure redress?

20.  In what manner can the Junto, or any of them, assist you in any of your honourable designs?

21.  Have you any weighty affair in hand, in which you think the advice of the Junto may be of service?

22.  What benefits have you lately received from any man not present?

23.  Is there any difficulty in matters of opinion, of justice, and injustice, which you would gladly have discussed at this time?

24.  Do you see any thing amiss in the present customs or proceedings of the Junto, which might be amended?

25.  Any person to be qualified as a member was to stand up, lay his hand upon his breast, and be asked the following questions, viz.

26.  Have you any particular disrespect to any present members? Answer. I have not.

27.  Do you sincerely declare that you love mankind in general, of what profession or religion soever? Answer. I do.

28.  Do you think any person ought to be harmed in his body, name, or goods, for mere speculative opinions, or his external way of worship? Answer. No.

29.  Do you love truth for truth's sake, and will you endeavor impartially to find and receive it yourself, and communicate it to others? Answer. Yes.

Grad School Acronyms

ITL - In the Library

OOL - Out of Library

LOL - Lots of Library

(SOL and FML still retain their same meanings)

I'm just kidding about the last two.  Graduate school is nuts.  It's constant waves and waves of something, and there's not enough time to articulate what that something is.  I think the first and most important skill I'll be learning this semester is how to read efficiently and effectively. Another will be time management -- in particular, knowing when to stop.  All and all I'm loving all of it. I'm still moving into Shepard University, but it is gorgeous as is and we've already thrown two dinner parties (Thursday is sacred).  Today I swam all the way across Walden Pond and saw Thoreau's hut.  When I get the chance, I'll put a photo up.

For now, here's David McCord's poem "What Cheer"

The decent docent doesn't doze;
He teaches standing on his toes.
His student dassn't doze and does.
And that's what teaching is and was.

History of American Civilization

This blog has been many things over the past few years, but wherever I've been and however I've treated it, it's always been a place for me to record things that I think are worth keeping in mind.

This past year has been nuts.  I worked at as a curatorial intern (with stipend!) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, directly under an amazing curator, Elizabeth Kornhauser, who would literally take hours of her time, sometimes daily, just to talk with me about art.  My experience with her was mentorship unparalleled, unbounded with such a wealth of resources that is the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  I had the opportunity to give tours to the public, which was a rewarding educational performance.  Every tour I gave, people would stay after and talk with me longer -- I had the freedom to take longer if I chose.  The tour I constructed myself, "Moments of Indecision and Catastrophe" took museum goers to David's Death of Socrates, to Lucas Cranach's Judgment of Paris, to Rubens Venus and Adonis, to Cole's Oxbow, finally to Carpeaux Ugolino.  On my other tour, "Landscapes," I was immensely proud to have people who never before gave more than a passing glance to landscapes whole new perspective on the genre, starting with Breugel's The Harvesters, then El Greco's View of Toledo, Cole's Oxbow, Hannock's Oxbow (to this day I am ashamed I never did an Asian wall scroll of any sort.  I just never felt comfortable enough with my handle of Asian art).

Simultaneously, while I was working at the marble columned pedestal of culture, I was living in Bedford-Stuyvesant with my two best pals, Mario Sosa and Misha Epstein.  Bed-Stuy, do or die, was a place where I did not, and got out of before I did.  I still cannot even really write about the experience because it is something I am still processing over a year after the fact.  Needless to say, between the regular shootings, the repeated burglaries, the sinister threats, I was really glad to move out.

Then I had this really weird two weeks where I essentially worked in the shipping depot of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Queens, which was possibly the most monotonous job I've ever done ever, and drove me crazy. This one I can write about, and will soon.

Following that, I worked as a private tutor to the children of one of the wealthiest families in New York City, taking helicopters around New York, flying on private jets to vacations in the Caribbean, Europe, and Mexico, and learning how the other half lives.  At this point, I've seen both halves, and hope to situate myself somewhere comfortably in the middle.

Now I'm living in Cambridge, MA, in what can only be described as the most beautiful apartment I've ever lived in.  My roommates are great, my landlord is great, and I'm studying in my first year for my PhD in American Studies at Harvard.  I'll likely be here for the next six years, so during that time, this blog will become more of a place to post random thoughts and excerpts from what I've read that I find particularly poignant and worth reflection.  I have no idea what exactly I am going to get out of all this, but I have no doubt it will be a tremendous experience.  Hopefully it will also periodically become a travel blog as well!

And may I say, as I said some 4 years ago when I was working at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, a place which I love so much, which offered me mentorship, and friends who loved learning for the sake of learning, and such a sincere wealth of knowledge and opportunity (for free!) that I wondered if there was really any need to go anywhere else (and perhaps still wonder periodically), that what I said back then still stands now: Go Obama!

Chapter 87 - The Grand Armada

This passage struck me. Ishmael and the harpooning crews have unexpectedly been pulled into the middle of an enormous pod of sperm whales, the "Grand Armada," where, utterly surrounded and one flick of a fluke from death, Ishmael marvels at the playful newborn calves nudging his boat, and revelates:  

...thus, though surrounded by circle upon circle of consternations and affrights, did these inscrutable creatures at the centre freely and fearlessly indulge in all peaceful concernments; yea, serenely revelled in dalliance and delight. But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm; and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy.

What a moment. Ishmael and his crew, the hunters, are suddenly a part of an enormous, deistic, revolving clockwork of whales -- their fates, their powers, their deadly potential is instantaneously nullified in this moment of concentric calm. It is a moment of pause in which one's miniscule position in the universe is made smoothly, silently, terrifyingly clear. It is a moment of universal judgment, when one realizes his fate is entirely out of his own hands. And here, the serene pause of judgment:

...we glided between two whales into the innermost heart of the shoal, as if from some mountain torrent we had slid into a serene valley lake. Here the storms in the roaring glens between the outermost whales, were heard but not felt. In this central expanse the sea presented that smooth satin-like surface, called a sleek, produced by the subtle moisture thrown off by the whale in his more quiet moods. Yes, we were now in that enchanted calm which they say lurks at the heart of every commotion.

Yet Ishmael has no real fear of death. In an sense, he has already died -- a suicide -- at page one, when he commits himself to the sea. This, I suppose, explains his extraordinary, revelatory calm in the face of overwhelming danger. Like a samurai, Ishmael has already accepted death, and is therefore able to truly enjoy life, not by clinging to it, but by knowing it is already gone. And so he considers the metaphysical implications of his situation, the idea of a universal calm before the storm, the smooth, serene, calmness that is often the greatest virtue of a magnanimous hero in the face of emergency, and simultaneously the most disturbing and unnerving quality of the sociopath, who, with the same degree of clarity, enacts some gruesome evil. Thankfully, our narrator is Ishmael. He's the magnanimous type (we can look to Ahab for the other sort), whose ruminations recall my favorite lines from Candide:

"What is that--optimism?"
"Why, it is the mania of maintaining that all is well,
even when you are feeling bad."

Anemic Cinema

I mashed together Marcel Duchamp's whirling Anemic Cinema (1926) with The Album Leaf's "Over the Pond."  Duchamp, the notorious upstart, printed these two dimensional "Rotoreliefs" and then spun them on a turntable -- as the images spin, they achieve the illusion of three-dimensionality that is strangely mesmerizing. Paired together with The Album Leaf's measured, oneiric piano, the backdrop of warm bass, and strange, nostalgic vocals (Sigur Ros), the whole invites the viewer to project himself into circles.

For a translation of Duchamps' punful, playful, spiral phrases, see Katrina Martin's article.

The Blood of a Poet

I mashed Jean Cocteau's 1930 silent film Le Sang d'un Poète together with Gui Boratto's remixed "Paradise Circus." The original film is cut very differently -- the way I've cut it presents the story as more of a retelling of the "Galatea and Pygmalion" myth, but it preserves much of Cocteau' ingenious representations of the artistic psyche.  Enjoy!

Measuring Intelligence

The best measure of intelligence that I can think of (barring of course SATs, ACTs, Mensa testing, IQ tests, phrenology, physiognomy, and magic) is the extent to which one can make what is in his or her mind occur in reality.  There are many, many types of intelligence -- Leonardo da Vinci was a genius of drawing, Paganini of the violin, J.P. Morgan of business and money, Melville of writing -- all measured by the extent to which a given person can make what they imagine come to life.

This is not to be confused with a measure of goodness. Goodness has much more to do with what you imagine in the first place.

Are you smart enough to trick yourself?

Vasstalgia

"You never liked me at college," says the character Norine in The Group. "None of your crowd did." How many of us have said the same thing, to ourselves if to no one else? How many of us have felt betrayed by that mythic essence? How many of us have lain awake at night in fear that our professors were on to our fraudulence, that our friends secretly hated us, that the admissions office let us in by mistake? How many of us regularly revisit Vassar in our dreams, wherein we retrace our steps through the quad as if searching for a lost item, wherein we have the nagging feeling that we've forgotten to do something, though we don't know what it is?

All of us, I suspect. Mythic qualities tend to have that effect. Vassar captures the imagination even as it breaks the heart. And isn't that what keeps us coming back for more?

A Blessing

Give me the flexibility to go with the flow,
And the wisdom to know when to resist.

Memory

is such a slippery fish.  I'm constantly forgetting everything I've ever known.  Which is probably why I am so amazed by all these things that I already knew.  My brain is like a bucket of sand with a hole in the bottom, constantly spilling spilling spilling even as I shovel more on top.  If you memorize it, no one can take it away from you -- it's in the bucket forever -- a permanent tool in your toolbox that is never discarded for lack of use.  But I need more tools than can fit in a bucket.

In short: more blog posts.  We are what we read; or better, we are what we remember.

Melville Addition

Had to put up a link to this.
http://themobydickcollection.blogspot.com/

And more digitization projects I want to be a part of:
http://dhcommons.org/projects

Twenty-four

Twenty-four is a nice, round number.  Versatile, it adapts to many situations. It's useful, open. Divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12 -- how gregarious! How very friendly! Who doesn't like 24? Perhaps 5, but if you have 3 on your side, who cares what 5 has to say.  So many odd numbers suck, 5 being among the foremost. 13, good grief, there's an awkward year -- now wonder we leave that one off elevators.  15? Ha! You're not driving Mr. Trying-to-be-an-Adult. Why don't you ask your brother to give you a ride to that date of yours?  17 is okay I suppose. 17 allows for a lot of forgiveness. You messed up? Of course you did, you're 17. You did well? Fantastic, you're becoming a respectable adult ahead of your time.  And 23... jesus 23.  If ever a number needed to gain or lose one, it was 23: what an uneven number.  Nobody likes you when you're 23. The only worse number I can think of is 33. But 24. That's a good one. That's a number you can trust.

Dira Cupido

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars..." -Kerouac

Aphorisms from the Hagakure

The Way of the Samurai is found in death. When it comes to either/or, there is only the quick choice of death. It is not particularly difficult. Be determined and advance. To say that dying without reaching one's aim is to die a dog's death is the frivolous way of sophisticates. When pressed with teh choice of life or death, it is not necessary to gain one's aim. We all want to live. And in large part we make our logic according to what we like. But not having attained our aim and continuing to live is cowardice.

Thought by thought we see our own mistakes.

At the time when there was a council concerning the promotion of a certain man, the council members were at the point of deciding that promotion was useless because of the fact that the man had previous been involved in a drunken brawl. But someone said, "If we were to cast aside every man who had made a mistake once, useful men could probably not be come by. A man who makes a mistake once will be considerably more prudent and useful because of his repentance. I feel that he should be promoted."
Someone then asked, "Will you guarantee him?"
The man replied, "Of course I will."
The others asked, "By what will you guarantee him?"
And he replied, "I can guarantee him by the fact that he is a man who has erred once. A man who has never once erred is dangerous."
This said, the man was promoted.

Above all, the Way of the Samurai should be in being aware that you do not know what is going to happen next. Victory and defeat are matters of the temporary force of circumstances. The way of avoiding shame is different. It is simply death. Even if it seems certain you will lose, retaliate. Neither wisdom nor technique has a place in this. A real man does not think of victory or defeat. He plunges recklessly towards an irrational death. By doing this, you will awaken from your dreams.

There is something to be learned from a rainstorm. When meeting with a sudden shower, you try not to get wet and run quickly along the road. But doing such things as passing under the eaves of houses, you still get wet. When you are resolved from the beginning, you will not be perplexed, though you will get the same soaking. This understanding extends to everything.

The Way of the Samurai is in desperateness. Ten men or more cannot kill such a man. Common sense will not accomplish great things. Simply become insane and desperate. Loyalty and devotion are of themselves within desperation.

It is bad when one thing becomes two. It is the same for anything that is called a Way.

Lesson of the Day:

A day without writing is a day forgotten.

Cowboy Junkies - Sweet Jane

An old classic. Somehow more classic than the original.

A Night of Death

I was coming out of the subway on Franklin and Eastern Parkway when, fifty feet in front of me, I watched a man chase another man, pull out a gun, and shoot at him twice. The shooter missed entirely, and stopped to futz with his gun before he looked around, and, for a second, stared directly at me--

At this point, you would think that I would have ducked, or ran the opposite direction, or been startled by the gunfire. You would think that I would think. I am not sure that I did.

Maybe I unconsciously calculated that this guy wasn't that accurate. Maybe I figured that if he really wanted to kill that guy, he would have fired more than two shots. Maybe I figured that if he was futzing with his gun, it probably was disabled for some reason. Maybe I was drunk.

But I just kept walking towards him. Sure it is possible that my brain unconsciously calculated that even in the given circumstances the chances of dying was low. Or I could have just been in shock. But really, I think I simply didn't care.
He sprinted off across the street and down the opposite corner.

My friend, Marcus Aurelius

Today, however, there are no models of good retainers. In light of this, it would be good to make a model to learn from. To do this, one should look at many people and choose from each person his best point only. For example, one person for politeness, one for bravery, one for the proper way of speaking, one for correct conduct and one for steadiness of mind. Thus will the model be made. -- Hagakure

My father: consistency; incomparable commitment; doing what needs to be done; the valuable lesson of how to like yourself.

My mother: the limits intelligence and ambition; responsibility; doing what is difficult; to always read; how to turn adversity into growth. How unpardonable it would have been of you to turn out a blockhead.

My grandmother: prudence, and planning. Her complete inability to do harm, or even conceive of doing it. There's always more toothpaste in the tube.

My oldest brother: how to start over; to do what you really want to do.

My middle brother: sarcasm; the art of arguing; jazz; how to stand up for yourself. Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.

James: my love of drawing, and later, my love of art; emotional intensity and sensitivity; mildness; eternal friendship. Laundry Lights.

Dr. Rappaport: mentorship; philosophical inquiry -- the nature of goodness, beauty, love; a titan of scholarly thought; the value of what is old. What moved you?

Dr. Pelletier: not to believe everything Dr. Rappaport says. Albert, quit telling God what to do!

Lazar: how to study; loyalty and friendship.

Russ: expanding the boundaries of my conception of humor.

Quincy: that happiness is a choice we make every day.

Mrs. Dandlicker: sometimes the only solution is drilling, endless, repetition. I'll see you after school.

Fitzgerald: the dream defines you. Sure it may not be possible, but it might be -- there's only a chance if you can imagine it. He stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling.

Dr. Lucic: that true intelligence is a zen-like clarity that cannot be taught, but can be embodied. Is this necessary?

Dr. Adams: how to discuss 3-dimensional space. Sometimes I think the whole of art history could be rewritten as an analysis of corners. Yes, corners: the way in which one plane intersects ...another.

Dr. Epstein: how to talk about subjects I know nothing about. You can't learn during a first reading. You can't learn in a second reading. You have to read an reread and reread again. One who has read a portion on hundred times cannot compare with one who has read that portion 101 times.

Mr. Reedy: how to look at objects; how to render the abstract image in your head onto paper.

Dr. Peck: kindness; soft spoken success; the subtle victory. Are you using your gifts for or against the people?

Dr. Kane: that it's only natural. Nature's first green is gold.

Dr. Frank: that a guitar is so much cheaper than a shrink; for teaching me the challenges of expertise; that I can become intensely interested in just about anything.

Misha: the value of a dinner party; hospitality. Deipnosophist

Mr. Mulgrew: how to read (as a high schooler); a tremendous gift. We are what we read.

Dr. Weedin: how to read (as an undergraduate) every single jot and tittle. How true is it that words are but vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feeling and purposes.

Dr. Updegraff: for Latin. He has a shield of lion's hide, a lance with gleaming iron tip, and a javelin--and, better than all arms--his daring soul.

Aeneas: you don't have to be perfect to be a hero; everyone does the very best they can, which is often very poor. Aeneas wept.


Mr. Feliu: that movies are a legitimate art form, not just a pass time. 

Socrates: so long as his character is unchanged, no one can harm the virtuous man. Socrates thinks he knows all the questions.

Melville: for a firm grasp of the ungraspable, an understanding of the unknowable, a measuring of the unfathomable; the awesome manliness of refusing to quit wrestling with these questions; the possibility of being consumed by them. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air.

Rome: that how a society is built fundamentally defines its character.

Tatyana: the silliness of pretension. The universe might go to the devil, so long as I could go on drinking tea!

Violetta: how to master your emotions, even the most consuming of them all -- jealousy; loneliness.

Shi Heng Jun: the limits of a physical body. How to convert negative energy into positive outcomes. How to summon unrealized energy. How little I need to live.

Remo: local pride.

Jarow: Tarot; astrology; divine order; the tenuousness of reality, reason.

Lia: poetry; not to overlook what is small. Puddle-wonderful.

Robby: how very limiting academia is; the importance of not deceiving yourself.

Allie: classical music; how to feel a note. Elgar Cello Concerto in E Minor.

Nate: that anything can be a musical instrument, and anyone a musician.

Emily: love; kindness; the capability to open. And the heart of the boy beat, and he lowered his glance for the first time in his life and turned his modest eyes to the ground. And his glance sank to the river and rested on the image of the girl as it reflected with the morning star. (Scroll of Fire).

To writing: because I cannot comprehend what I cannot put into words. Let me speak, then, and find some relief.

To the world: your harmony is mine. Whatever time you choose is the right time. Not late, not early.

Chrysalis

Neither caterpillar, nor yet Butterfly,
I putter through this long half life
With memories of boughy greens,
Wiggling within my means,
Whispered words with worms below,
'Waiting one to woo my woe.


These things and more they fill my dreams,
While I enclosed grip bursting seams
And simmer slow insides liquefied,
Simmering, simmering within this mold
Till solid soon I dissolve my hold.

Henry Miller on New York City

From Henry Miller Asleep & Awake (1975)

"Ahhhhh - now I know where I am...and who I am. Back in that old shithole, New York, where I was born. A place where I knew nothing but starvation, humiliation, despair, frustration...every goddamn thing. Nothing but misery. Every bloody street I look down, I see nothing but misery, nothing but monsters. Of course, this was the New York that I knew when I was being born, or rather I didn’t know it yet. Later, when I began to explore it, why, it’s a different city, a little more horrible. It gets worse all the time. Today, I think it’s the ugliest, filthiest, shittiest city in the world. When I was a kid, there was hardly anything that we have today - no telephones, no automobiles...no nothing, really. It was rather quaint. There was color even, in the buildings. But as time went on, why, it got more horrible to me. When I think of the Brooklyn bridge, which was the only bridge then in existence...how many times I walked over that bridge on an empty stomach, back and forth, looking for a handout, never getting anything...selling newspapers at Times Square, begging on Broadway, coming home with a dime maybe. It’s no wonder that I had these goddamned recurring nightmares all my life. I don’t know how I ever survived, or why I’m still sane. In fact, I don’t know now whether I’m awake or dreaming. My whole past seems like one long dream, punctured with nightmares."

New Year's Resolutions

(I'll come back to this).

1. More poetry.
2. Update this journal more -- to many stories are going unwritten, and memory is a slippery fish.
3. More kung fu. More qi. So handsome!
4. Graduate school.
5. Better scheduling starts with a calendar and post-its.
6. Earlier to rise.