Log24

From Australian National University:

Biography

Mark Elvin retired from the University in 2006,
and, apart from an occasional semi-popular article
and review, and offering comments at a handful of
conferences each year, has moved away from his
previous research interests in Chinese history, and is
working on annotating his draft translation of a
crucial but relatively neglected European work
in Latin on plant science, R. J. Camerer’s
De sexu plantarum epistola 
[Letter on the sexuality of plants] of 1694.

In other news:

* Background for the title: Rainbow Bridge  in Maui and in this journal.

See also this  journal on January 21, 2014.

The title is a quote from Stephen Dedalus during
the Black Mass scene in Ulysses. (See May 12.)

Material related to the Ulysses scene:

Material related to pure reason (also from the above PS1 date):

See also a Log24 search for “Zeppelin.”

From this journal last March:

The title is a line from a preview of the new
film “The Double,” starring Jesse Eisenberg:

Related lines from T. S. Eliot:

Here is a place of disaffection
Time before and time after
In a dim light: neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness
Turning shadow into transient beauty
With slow rotation suggesting permanence
Nor darkness to purify the soul
Emptying the sensual with deprivation
Cleansing affection from the temporal.
Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after.
Eructation of unhealthy souls
Into the faded air, the torpid
Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London,
Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,
Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.

“The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning
of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not
typical (if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted), and to him the
meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside,
enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a
haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes
are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine.”

— Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness

Photo of full moon over Oslo last night by Josefine Lyche:

A scene from my film viewing last night:

Some background (click to enlarge):

Note:

The “I, Frankenstein” scene above should not be interpreted as
a carrying of Martin Gardner through a lyche gate.  Gardner
is, rather, symbolized by the asterisk in the first image from
the above Google search.

Continued from this morning and from earlier posts.
See also Abramson.

Related material: Ken Auletta, “Why Jill Abramson Was Fired.”

* Background for the title phrase: see Down + Up + Staircase.

See last night’s pentagram photo and a post from May 13, 2012.

That post links to a little-known video of a 1972 film.
A speech from the film was used by Oslo artist Josefine Lyche as a
voice-over in her  2011 golden-ratio video (with pentagrams) that she
exhibited along with a large, wall-filling copy of some of my own work.
The speech (see video below) is clearly nonsense.

The patterns* Lyche copied are not.

“Who are you, anyway?” 

— Question at 00:41 of 15:00, Rainbow Bridge (Part 5 of 9)
at YouTube, addressed to Baron Bingen as “Mr. Rabbit”

* Patterns exhibited again later, apparently without the Lyche pentagram video.
It turns out, by the way, that Lyche created that video by superimposing
audio from the above “Rainbow Bridge” film onto a section of Disney’s 1959
“Donald in Mathmagic Land” (see 7:17 to 8:57 of the 27:33 Disney video).

Click the above quote for some related material.

The title is that of a short story in Dubliners , by James Joyce.
See in that story the phrase “Grey-green eyes.”

See also the tag #greygreengrids on an Oslo artist’s photo today.

For those disappointed by the cancellation
of this evening’s Black Mass at Harvard,
here is a somewhat less exciting substitute.

See also Peter J. Cameron + Magic.

From a New York Times  obituary by Bruce Weber tonight—

Charles Marowitz, Director and Playwright, Dies at 82

“There are two kinds of bafflement in the theater: the kind that fascinates as it perplexes, and the kind that just perplexes,” he wrote in The Times in 1969 in an essay about Mr. Shepard’s play “La Turista,” which had recently opened in London. “If a play doesn’t make quick sense, but enters into some kind of dialogue with our subconscious, we tend to admit it to that lounge where we entertain interesting-albeit-unfamiliar strangers.

“If it only baffles, there are several courses open to us: we can assume it is ‘above our heads’ or directed ‘to some other kind of person,’ or regretfully conclude that it confuses us because it is itself confused. However, the fear of being proved wrong is so great today that almost every new work which isn’t patently drivel gets the benefit of the doubt.”

 Another play by Sam Shepard mentioned in the obituary suggests a review of…

• “From the Witch Ball,” a post from May 2,
  the reported date of Marowitz’s death
• “Two Satanic Majesties Request All-Devouring Fame,”
  a NY Times  review from October 9, 2006
• This  journal on that date— October 9, 2006—
  “Art Wars: To Apollo.”

GOD is “Good Orderly Direction.” — AA saying.

See also yesterday’s noon post, with four  orderly directions.

To Bel Kaufman, author of
Up the Down Staircase.

Click image for some backstory.

Para una Versión del I King
por Jorge Luis Borges

El porvenir es tan irrevocable
como el rígido ayer. No hay una cosa
que no sea una letra silenciosa
de la eterna escritura indescifrable
cuyo libro es el tiempo. Quien se aleja
de su casa ya ha vuelto. Nuestra vida
es la senda futura y recorrida.
Nada nos dice adiós. Nada nos deja.
No te rindas. La ergástula es oscura,
la firme trama es de incesante hierro,
pero en algún recodo de tu encierro
puede haber un descuido, una hendidura.
El camino es fatal como la flecha
pero en las grietas está Dios, que acecha.

— La Moneda de Hierro  (1976)

For a translation, see a Dickinson College page.

See also Wrinkles in Time and Models of Everything.

From a Log24 search for “Boxing Day“—

(Click image for some commentary.)

From The New York Times —

Correction: Jan. 16, 2006

“An obituary on Dec. 27 about John Diebold,
a businessman and engineer who helped shape
modern industrial development in America,
misstated a business venture of John Diebold Inc.,
an investment firm he founded in 1967. It did
not finance Diebold Election Systems, a maker of
polling machines that, despite its name, has no
connection to John Diebold.”

Related material:

Synchronicity and this  journal on the date of the correction.

For the title…

See Punch  (Dec. 15, 2010) and Obituary  (today):

This post was suggested by last night’s posts on conceptual art
(in São Paulo) and on a quarter-to-three story.

From this journal on May 31, 2012:

Matrix Problem:

Click image for some related material.

Meanwhile…

A game released on the above date:

… at quarter to three:

See also Stephen King and Steam in this journal.

Click image below for the source.

“Together in heaven” — Phrase quoted in Norwegian, Piper Laurie, 1958

“As a little child” — Biblical phrase

“Cool.” — Phrase suggested by this morning’s weather:

Wikipedia on Autodesk Maya:

“The product is named after the Sanskrit word
Maya (माया māyā), the Hindu concept of illusion.”

See also the poem in this year’s Easter Sunday post.

Some might prefer the “human globe.” See St. Cecilia’s day last year.

Link to song and lyrics.

“There’s plenty of dives to be someone you’re not
Just say you’re looking for something you might have forgot”

— Rosanne Cash, 1981

See also Cantina  in this journal.

See also…

and … in this journal, the author of The Plumed Serpent.

The Jerusalem Cross

The New York Times  reports the May Day death
of a son of “a charismatic figure” in Israel:

The center image above is from “A Walk with Love and Death.”

(Continued from Tuesday morning)

“… Or what’s a heaven for?“

Continued from Nov. 21, 2010:

“They always print… the lottery.”

The reader may interpret the lottery numbers
as he or she pleases.

Related material: Jersey City in Log24 posts
of April 25 and April 28, and today’s NY Times
image of another Jersey City landmark.

Some background for a recent photo
by Josefine Lyche:

The Boys from Uruguay and Witch Ball.

The photo:

For John Milton at the Cervecería XX —

• Bingo in this journal, as well as
• Black Mass and 
• “The Platonic Heritage in Under the Volcano“
  (Studies in Canadian Literature, v. 3, no. 1, 1978)

Related material: Peter J. Cameron on Bertrand Russell
in A Midnight Exorcism.

See also “Six Cuban Families Celebrate Kids’ Law Degrees.”
Feliz Cumpleaños  to Al Pacino.

* “The Lighthouse,” in Spanish.  See Under the Volcano .

In memory of Peter Drummond-Murray, two readings:

The Beauty that Saves and The Trials of Device.

Drummond-Murray reportedly died at 84 on April 13,
Palm Sunday.  The Telegraph  describes him:

“A big, grim-faced man with a dour wit,
Drummond-Murray resembled some rugged
Jacobite from a novel by Sir Walter Scott.”

Or Sydney Greenstreet.

“The stuff that dreams are made of.” — The Maltese Falcon

Seattle Meets Kansas:

* For related material, see Gray Space.

(Continued from Palm Sunday)

From Richard Wilbur’s “Walking to Sleep” —

Try to remember this: what you project
Is what you will perceive; what you perceive
With any passion, be it love or terror,
May take on whims and powers of its own.
Therefore a numb and grudging circumspection
Will serve you best, unless you overdo it,
Watching your step too narrowly, refusing
To specify a world, shrinking your purview
To a tight vision of your inching shoes—
Which may, as soon you come to think, be crossing
An unseen gorge upon a rotten trestle.
What you must manage is to bring to mind
A landscape not worth looking at, some bleak
Champaign at dead November’s end, its grass
As dry as lichen, and its lichens grey….

See also —

For the first word of the title, see The Harrowing of Hell.

For the second, see Pater and Hopkins.

This post was suggested by yesterday’s Symmetry and by…

Todd Leopold at CNN today on a novel by
the late Gabriel García Márquez —

“…a tapestry of almost biblical proportions….”

See also Sermon (Sunday, March 6. 2011).

“Leave a space.” — Tom Stoppard

Art Wars  view —
image from a post at noon on Saturday, April 12:

Kansas City view:

Review of Seeing Gray , a book by pastor Adam Hamilton
of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection
in Leawood, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City—

“Adam Hamilton invites us to soulful gray space
between polarities, glorious gray space that is holy,
mysterious, complex, and true. Let us find within
our spirits the courage and humility to live and learn
in this faithful space, to see gray, to discern a more
excellent way.”

—Review by United Methodist Bishop Hope Morgan Ward

The above quotation was suggested by the following from today’s
online Kansas City Star :

“Two of the victims were 14-year-old Reat Griffin Underwood
and his grandfather, William Lewis Corporon, who attended the
United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood.

The Rev. Adam Hamilton, the church’s senior pastor, shared
the news with church members at the beginning of the evening
Palm Sunday service.”

Update of 10:48 PM — A related photo:

Tom Cruise at the Vatican in MI3

Other descents of change:

Sacred Space and Cube Descending.

Context— Last night’s post Change Arises,
on Walter Gropius, Wolfe’s “Silver Prince.”

In memory of Lucia Eames, who reportedly died
on April 1, 2014:

“… Walter Gropius was her professor ….”

See also in this journal Gropius and the April 1 posts.

Related material: “As a little child.”

The New York Times  yesterday on Chloë Grace Moretz:

“The public may see her in a certain, put-together way, she said:
‘But when I go home, I’m like, “Let’s turn on ‘Little Mermaid’!”‘”

See also A Word from Our Sponsa and the following:

(Continued)

From Between Two Worlds (Feb. 25, 2007) —
Nicolas Cage as Ghost Rider (2007):

More recently, Nicolas Cage as Big Daddy (2010):

The New York Times  as a guide for the perplexed:

“Go back to the flaming skull, Dad.”

It’s 10 PM.  Do you know where your childen are?

A post from March 28, 2014 —

March 28 was reportedly the date of death for a public figure:

Edwin Kagin, Atheist Who Battled Religion
in Public Sphere, Dies at 73.

Related material — the link Complex Reflection from March 28,
and a post on “The Sunset Limited.”

The “Sunset” post was suggested by the contrast between Kagin’s
views and those in  a book by his son Stephen, a minister.

Amy Adams in the recent film “Her” —
“You’re dating an OS?  What is that like?”

eXPired

From Log24  on Feb. 26, 2008 —

Related material:  A Harvard Crimson  story on a student who died
this morning from injuries he received in a fall from a building
near the New England Aquarium in Boston. He reportedly fell around
midnight on the night of April 5-6, Saturday-Sunday.

Here are links to two posts from The Fish Tank  blog in The
Harvard Ichthus — from 2013 March 9 and 2013 March 16—
that are apparently by this same student.

See also the link to a Harvard-related psychiatrists’ paper in
The View from Lone Pine, a Log24 post from Saturday evening.

(Continued)

“…in 1959… I stepped out alone, walked into the streets
of Lone Pine, Calif., and saw the world— the mountains,
the sky, the low scattered buildings— suddenly flame into life.

There were no visions, no prophetic voices or visits by
totemic animals, just this blazing everywhere.”

— Barbara Ehrenreich in today’s NY Times Sunday Review ,
“A Rationalist’s Mystical Moment”

A less credible account —

The Surreal Meets the Real

MOVIE REVIEW

“Place Vendôme” (1998)

Odilon Redon, L’Oeil

FILM REVIEW
For Deneuve, a Setting In Which She Sparkles

By DAVE KEHR

Published: August 18, 2000 in The New York Times

“Named after the Parisian square that is home
to the Ritz Hotel, several haute couture boutiques
and some of the world’s most expensive jewelry shops,
‘Place Vendôme’ provides a perfect setting for
Catherine Deneuve, herself one of the French cinema’s
most precious gems.”

On The Blazing World , a new novel —

“Hustvedt uses fragment-stories, frame narratives, and unreliable
narrators to talk about the ways in which brilliant women across
history have been silenced, forgotten, and appropriated by men.
This is a narrative suspicious of narratives, a story that
demonstrates how damaging stories can be.”

— Review by Amal El-Mohtar

The protagonist of Hustvedt’s novel is named Harriet Burden.

A midrash for Darren Aronofsky, director of The Fountain*  and Noah—

Part I: The Burden of Proof —

Part II: The Story of Noam —

* See The Fountain  in “The Story Theory of Truth,” Columbus Day, 2013

Two timely images for Oslo artist Josefine Lyche —

Backstory:  Searches for “Blazing World” and for “Josefine + Lyche + Pink”
in this journal.

The image above is by a man, Brian Stauffer. Related material:

An image from today’s NY Times Sunday Book Review —

This  image is by a non-man, Kelsey Dake.

The first image above, since it combines Lyche’s enthusiasm for the color
pink and (apparently) for fishnet stockings, seems to me the better picture,
despite its prurient nature.

(Updated through 10 AM ET)

Click the above for further details.

An elegy adapted from “Sequence,” by Theodore Roethke —

“She listened when light sang.”

Perhaps such a song was sung
on Shakespeare’s (and Nabokov’s) birthday, 2009.

Friday evening’s post Musement dealt with Iris Murdoch’s
phrase “the clean crystalline work.”

For dirty bloody work see the life of Don Reitz, who
reportedly died at 84 on March 19.

“For every kind of vampire, there is a kind of cross.” — Gravity’s Rainbow

“I don’t write exclusively on Jewish themes or about Jewish characters.
My collection of short stories, Strange Attractors , contained nine pieces,
five of which were, to some degree, Jewish, and this ratio has provided me
with a precise mathematical answer (for me, still the best kind of answer)
to the question of whether I am a Jewish writer. I am five-ninths a Jewish writer.”

— Rebecca Goldstein, “Against Logic”

Related material:  The cross of five ninths, from Epiphany 2006.

The following is from a web page by
Andreas Schöter, developer of  The Symbol Game.

Building the Narrative

The game can simply be played as a competitive board game,
simply trying to accumulate the most points. However,
to play this way is to miss the main purpose of the Symbol Game.

The author’s page on the game itself —

(This post was suggested by this afternoon’s post  Diamond Space.)

(Continued)

The front page of The New York Times Book Review 
for next Sunday (March 30, 2014) is devoted to a
review of Siri Hustvedt’s new novel  The Blazing World .
See two posts from St. Patrick’s day:  Her and Narratives.

The review’s author is Fernanda Eberstadt.

The review is titled “Outsider Art.”
See also that phrase in this journal.

Yakov G. Sinai today won the 2014 Abel Prize.
Earlier, he won the Wolf Prize.

Wolf Foundation press release quoted in the March 1997
Notices of the American Mathematical Society —

On Sinai —

“He is generally recognized as the world leader
in the mathematics of statistical physics.”

This afternoon’s New York Lottery:  813 and 1857.

Unrelated remarks:  813 and  1857.