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Irish Fourplay

“…something I once heard Charles M. Schulz say, ‘Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It’s already tomorrow in Australia.’”

 — William F. House

“Forewarned is four-armed.”

— Folk saying

Today in Australia is February First, the feast of St. Bridget.  As several websites note, St. Bridget is a combination of Christian saint and Goddess figure… rather like St. Sara (patron saint of Gypsies, also known as Kali) or like Sara Pezzini in the classic TV series “Witchblade.”

“Aww… Irish foreplay.”

— Sara Pezzini in Witchblade, Episode 6

“Mighty in the gift of purity
She was pleasing unto the Bridegroom on high.”

— Song of St. Bridget

“Brace yourself, Bridget.”

— Definition of Irish foreplay

Saint Bridget’s Cross: Four people can form this cross by joining hands as shown.  Of course, a Goddess like Kali (shown above) or Sara Pezzini could do it all by herself.

For futher details, see The Swastika Goddess,  the history of Jews and the Roman Catholic Church, and the history of Irish neutrality in World War II.

Postscript  of 11 PM —

The Goddess Bridget in Literature

The Goddess Bridget (or Brigid) is incarnated in two classic works of American literature —

• The American patriot and Communist Party supporter Dashiell Hammett gave an unflattering portrayal of Brigid (O’Shaughnessy) in The Maltese Falcon.  For a Jungian analysis of the relationship between Sam Spade and Brigid, see the perceptive remarks of Ryan Benedetti:

“In Jungian terms, Brigid becomes a projection of Spade’s anima, a contrasexual replica of his own face as expressed in someone of the opposite sex.

Spade wears a variety of masks in his work. Masking allows him to get underneath the scam most clients lay on him. He is closer to the darker side of his unconscious than any of the other characters in the book, and he is so, because of his role as shamus. His function in his society is to expose all of the underlying darkness of the human psyche.”

One way of looking at animus and anima is through the following archetypes:

A diamond and its dual “whirl” figure —
or a “jewel-box and its mate”

• Mark Twain, in Life on the Mississippi, describes the way Goddess Bridget (again, O’Shaughnessy) arranged the conveyance of her late husband to the next world:

 “D’ye mane to soy that Bridget O’Shaughnessy bought the mate to that joo-ul box to ship that dhrunken divil to Purgatory in?”

“Yes, madam.”

“Then Pat shall go to heaven in the twin to it, if it takes the last rap the O’Flaherties can raise!”

John O’Hara’s Birthday

“We stopped at the Trocadero and there was hardly anyone there.  We had Lanson 1926.  ‘Drink up, sweet.  You gotta go some.  How I love music.  Frère Jacques, Cuernavaca, ach du lieber August.  All languages.  A walking Berlitz.  Berlitz sounds like you with that champagne, my sweet, or how you’re gonna sound.’”

— John O’Hara, Hope of Heaven, Chapter 11, 1938

“And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.”

— Acts, Chapter 2, Verse 4

“Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a long the

PARIS,
1922-1939.”

— James Joyce, conclusion of Finnegans Wake

“Using illustrative material from religion, myth, and culture, he starts with the descent of the dove on Jesus and ends with the poetic ramblings of James Joyce.”

— Review of a biography of the Holy Spirit

Illustration added at 3:21 AM Feb. 3, 2003:

Firefall

Available for $220 from
 Worship Banners

Poetic Justice:
The Peacock Throne

Yesterday was the death day of two proponents of Empire: George III (in 1820) and Robert Frost (in 1963).  Lord Byron argued that the King slipped through heaven’s gate unobserved while a friend distracted St. Peter with bad poetry.  We may imagine, on this dark night of the soul, Frost performing a similar service.

Though poets of the traditional sort may still perform such services in Heaven, here on earth they have been superseded by writers of song lyrics.  An example, Roddy Frame (formerly of the group “Aztec Camera”), was born on yesterday’s date in 1964.  A Frame lyric:

Transformed by some strange alchemy,*
You stand apart and point to me
And point to something I can’t see….

— Back Door to Heaven         

Namely:

    The Back Door to Heaven    

For poetic purposes, we may think of surreptitious entry into Heaven as being conveniently accomplished through a portal like the above back door, which is that of a small hotel in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

This is not your average Motel 6 back door.  As a former New York Times correspondent has written,

“Over the years, the guest list has drawn the likes of Prince Philip and the Shah of Iran, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. But informality still reigns.”

This small hotel (or its heavenly equivalent), whose gardens are inhabited by various exotic birds, including peacocks, may still be haunted by the late Shah, who apparently styled himself “King of Kings and Emperor of the Peacock Throne.”  Of course, the ghost of the King of Kings, after entering the garden of Paradise, may not be able to resume his former human shape.  He might still, however, be among those greeted by his fellow Emperor, George III, with the famous words

“My Lords and Peacocks…“

*For more on alchemy and Cuernavaca, see
  my journal note “The Black Queen.”

Inaugural Address for Cullinane College (undelivered):

The Prisoner

Cullinane College was scheduled to open its doors officially on January 29, 2003.  The following might have been an appropriate inaugural address.

From The Prisoner: Comments
 on the Final Episode, “Fall Out”:

“When the President asks for a vote, he says: ‘All in favor.’ But he never asks for those opposed. (Though it appears that none will be opposed — and though he says its a democratic assembly, it is hardly that. The President even says that the society is in a ‘democratic crisis,’ though without democracy present, it’s just a sham.)

#48/Young Man sings ‘Dry Bones,’, which is his rebellion (notice its chaotic effect on ‘society’). But then the song gets taken over, ‘polished,’ and sung by a voice-over (presumably set up by #1). Does this mean that society is stealing the thunder (i.e. the creative energy) of youth, and cheapening it, or does it mean that youth is just rebelling in the same way that their fathers did (with equal ineffectiveness)? Perhaps it is simply a comment on the ease with which society can deal with the real rebellion of the 1960′s, which purported to be led by musicians; one that even the Beatles said was impossible in ‘Revolution.’”

President: Guilty! Read the Charge!

#48 is guilty, of something, and then the society pins something on him.”

The Other Side of the Coin

Excerpt from the poem that Robert Frost (who died on this date in 1963) meant to read at the 1961 inauguration of John F. Kennedy:

It makes the prophet in us all presage
The glory of a next Augustan age
Of a power leading from its strength and pride,
Of young ambition eager to be tried,
Firm in our free beliefs without dismay,
In any game the nations want to play.
A golden age of poetry and power
Of which this noonday’s the beginning hour.

I greatly prefer Robinson Jeffers’s “Shine, Perishing Republic“:

While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity,
    heavily thickening to empire,
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, 
    and the mass hardens,
I sadly smiling remember….

See also the thoughts on Republic vs. Empire in the work of Alec Guinness (as Marcus Aurelius and as Obi-Wan Kenobi).

State of the Communion

Relevant readings:

• Definition of the communion of saints in the Catholic Encylopedia —
  

  “In that communion there is no loss of individuality, yet such an interdependence that the saints are ‘members one of another’ (Rom., xii, 5)….”

• Ephesians 4:16 —

“…the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth….”

• A Game Designer’s Holy Grail —
  

  “Herman Melville described the exact process beautifully in his novel, Mardi:
  

  ‘In me, many worthies recline, and converse. I list to St. Paul who argues the doubts of Montaigne…’”

• Invitation to the HipBone Games —
  

  “…man is seen as he is sub specie aeternitatis, an ‘immortal diamond.’”



• Your Hip Bone Connected —
  

  “Now hear the word of the Lord” 

As promised last December 6…

Leadbelly Under the Volcano

See also the obituary of John Browning, pianist, who died January 26.

Historical postscript: Huddie Ledbetter (“Leadbelly”) was, according to some accounts, born on January 21, the date of Irene Diamond‘s death.  He died on December 6, the feast day of Saint Nicholas.

Our Town:
No There There?

Paul Newman, scheduled for his last performance in “Our Town” today, said in 1961:

“With that fifteen hundred, I could have beat him. That’s all I needed Charlie…You’d love to keep me hustlin’ for ya, huh, wouldn’t ya? I mean, a couple more years with me scufflin’ around, in them little towns and those back alleys, you might make yourself enough to get a little pool room back in Oakland – six tables and a handbook on the side…Lay down and die by yourself.”

— Fast Eddie Felson in “The Hustler“

For another view of Oakland, see

Super Bowl XXXVII Live!

Gertrude Stein on Oakland, California:

“There is no there there.”

Well, maybe a little pool room….

Steps

John Lahr on a current production of ”Our Town”:

“The play’s narrator and general master of artifice is the Stage Manager, who gives the phrase ‘deus ex machina’ a whole new meaning. He holds the script, he sets the scene, he serves as an interlocutor between the worlds of the living and the dead, calling the characters into life and out of it; he is, it turns out, the Author of Authors, the Big Guy himself. It seems, in every way, apt for Paul Newman to have taken on this role. God should look like Newman: lean, strong-chinned, white-haired, and authoritative in a calm and unassuming way—if only we had all been made in his image!”

— The New Yorker, issue of Dec. 16, 2002

On this date in 1971, Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, died. 

“Each person is like an actor who wants to run the whole show; is forever trying to arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery and the rest of the players in his own way. If his arrangements would only stay put, if only people would do as he wished, the show would be great. Everybody, including himself, would be pleased. Life would be wonderful….

First of all, we had to quit playing God. It didn’t work. Next, we decided that hereafter in this drama of life, God was going to be our Director….

When we sincerely took such a position, all sorts of remarkable things followed….

We were now at Step Three.”

— Alcoholics Anonymous, also known as “The Big Book,” Chapter 5 

Postscript of 5:15 AM, after reading the following in the New York Times obituaries:

“Must be a tough objective,” says Willie to Joe as they huddle on the side of a road, weapons ready. “Th’ old man says we’re gonna have th’ honor of liberatin’ it.”

“The old men know when an old man dies.” 

— Ogden Nash

After the Dream:

  A sequel to the previous note,
“Through a Soda-Fountain Mirror, Darkly”

From John Lahr’s recent review of “Our Town”:

“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.” 

The conclusion of Lewis Caroll’s Through the Looking Glass:

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream –
Lingering in the golden gleam –
Life, what is it but a dream?

An apt setting for a realistic production of “Our Town” would be Randolph, N.Y., a rather timeless place that a few years ago even had a working soda fountain of the traditional sort.  Yesterday’s note was prompted in part by an obituary of a young girl who attended St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Randolph.

This is the reason for tonight’s site music, “After a Dream,” by Fauré.

See also Piper Laurie’s recent film, St. Patrick’s Day.

Through a Soda-Fountain Mirror, Darkly

For Piper Laurie on Her Birthday

“He was part of my dream, of course —
but then I was part of his dream, too!”

— Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, Chapter XII (“Which Dreamed It?”) quoted as epigraph to a script for the film Pleasantville, which features a soda fountain from the 1950′s.

“Scenes from yesteryear are revisited through the soda-fountain mirror, creating such a fluid pathway between the past and present that one often becomes lost along the way.”

— Caroline Palmer’s review of “Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean” 

The above quotations are related to the 1952 film Has Anybody Seen My Gal?, in which James Dean makes a brief appearance at a 1920′s soda fountain. The film is chiefly notable for displaying the beauty of Piper Laurie, but a subplot is also of iterest.  Charles Coburn, a rich man visiting incognito a timeless town* rather like Pleasantville or Riverdale, takes up painting and is assisted by the young Gigi Perreau, who, as I recall, supplies him with the frame from a Circe Soap ad displayed in a shop window.

For more on a fictional rich character and Circe — indeed, enough for a soap — see my note of January 11, 2003, “The First Days of Disco,” and the sequel of January 12, 2003, “Ask Not.”  In the manner of magic realism, the adventures in the earlier entry of Scrooge McDuck and Circe are mirrored by those in the later entry of C. Douglas Dillon and Monique Wittig.

For a less pleasant trip back in time, see the later work of Gigi Perreau in Journey to the Center of Time (1967).  One viewer’s comment:

This is the worst movie ever made. I don’t want to hear about any of Ed Wood’s pictures. This is it, this is the one. Right here. The bottom of the deepest pit of cinema hell.

Happy birthday, Miss Laurie.

*Rather, in fact, like “Our Town.”  Here is John Lahr on a current production of that classic:

“The play’s narrator and general master of artifice is the Stage Manager, who gives the phrase ‘deus ex machina’ a whole new meaning. He holds the script, he sets the scene, he serves as an interlocutor between the worlds of the living and the dead, calling the characters into life and out of it; he is, it turns out, the Author of Authors, the Big Guy himself. It seems, in every way, apt for Paul Newman to have taken on this role. God should look like Newman: lean, strong-chinned, white-haired, and authoritative in a calm and unassuming way—if only we had all been made in his image!”

— The New Yorker, issue of Dec. 16, 2002

If Newman is God, then Miss Laurie played God’s girlfriend.  Nice going, Piper.

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

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.

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…”

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

“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.

“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. 

x

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 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)

Long Winter Evening

Humphrey Bogart took The Big Sleep on this date in 1957.  As his character said in that film, 

“I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. I don’t like them myself. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them long winter evenings.”

He may at times have been short on manners, but never on style.  Perhaps his spirit will revisit the City of Angels on this long winter evening, as the film industry seems to need a refresher course in that subject. Here is a scene that seems tailor-made for his reappearance.

Yale Club of Southern California

January 14, 2003
Yale in Hollywood:
Entertainment Mixer
Beverly Hills, 7-10 p.m.

“It’s rumored Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were investors in this hipster minimalist-decor bar. If you want their Tuesday night all-you-can-eat sushi for $9.95, call to make a reservation. The Continental is located at 8400 Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills, (323) 782-9717.”

Mmmm… Blue booze and sushi!

JAN. 12, 2003,  N. Y. TIMES OBITUARIES
C. Douglas Dillon, Financier Who Served in Kennedy Cabinet, Dies at 93 By ERIC PACE .Douglas Dillon was named secretary of the Treasury by President Kennedy and ambassador to France under President Eisenhower. Monique Wittig, 67, Feminist Writer, Is Dead By DOUGLAS MARTIN Monique Wittig was a French writer and literary theorist whose imaginative, fiercely innovative books tried to create a new mythology for the feminist movement.				Getty Images Maurice Gibb, Bassist for the Bee Gees, Dies at 53 By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Maurice Gibb played bass and keyboard for the Bee Gees, whose 1977 album, “Saturday Night Fever,” sold more than 40 million copies.

“It has a ghastly familiarity,
like a half-forgotten dream.”
 — Poppy (Gene Tierney) in
“The Shanghai Gesture.”

“It’s a gesture, dear, not a recipe.”
 — Peggy (Vanessa Redgrave) in
“Prick Up Your Ears“

Tolkien is Eleventy-One Today!

In observance of this milestone, some links:

• The Tolkien Society’s Birthday Toast 2003
• Inklings Resources and Site List 
• Review of Humphrey Carpenter’s The Inklings
• Alt.books.inklings newsgroup 
• Humphrey Carpenter’s The Inklings
• Timothy R. O’Neill’s The Individuated Hobbit
• Tolkien and subcreation: “On Fairy Stories“ in The Monsters and the Critics
• Dorothy Sayers’s The Mind of the Maker
• Dorothy Sayers’s defense of the traditional seven liberal arts in A Matter of Eternity
• C. S. Lewis’s defense of traditional values and “the Tao” in The Abolition of Man
• Charles Williams’s Many Dimensions, which deals in part with another magical ring.

Faces of the Twentieth Century:
The Harvest Continues

“I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
And, éyes, héart, what looks, what lips yet gave you a
Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?”

— Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Hurrahing in Harvest”

“Cowboy, take me away.
Fly this girl as high as you can
into the wild blue.”

— The Dixie Chicks

See
“Culture Clash at Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil“
in my notes of December 11, 2002.

    From The New York Times, Wed., Jan. 1, 2003:

Richard Horner, 82,
Broadway Producer, Is Dead

Richard Horner, a Broadway theater owner and producer who won a Tony Award for the 1974 revival of Eugene O’Neill’s “Moon for the Misbegotten,” died on Saturday [December 28, 2002] at his home in Palm Springs, Calif. He was 82.

According to one source, the O’Neill revival opened on December 28, 1973 — the same date on which the life of one of its producers was later to close.

From a CurtainUp review:

The revival at the Morosco was dubbed by its company “The Resurrection Play” since Jason Robards undertook the part just after a near fatal car accident and its legendary director José Quintero had just given up drinking.

According to the Internet Broadway Database, this revival, or resurrection, took place officially not on December 28 — the date of Horner’s death — but, appropriately, a day later.

At any rate, O’Neill’s title, along with my weblog entry of December 28, 2002,

“On This Date,” featuring Kylie Minogue,

suggests the following mini-exhibit of artistic efforts:

Curtain Up! July 2000 issue of GQ: Australian pop star Kylie Minogue strikes a pose. The cover is a takeoff on an Athena tennis poster.
Under the Volcano: A painting based on Malcolm Lowry’s classic novel. Having played tennis, Dr. Vigil and M. Laruelle talk about the events a year earlier. The view is of Cuernavaca from the Casino de la Selva hotel. Painting by Julian Heaton Cooper.

For further details on Kylie, Mexico, tequila, and
Under the Volcano,
see my entry of November 5, 2002.

For today’s site music, click “Old Devil Moon” here.