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:
Monday, May 5, 2014
Thursday, April 10, 2014
Change Arises (continued)
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.”
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Sunday, June 1, 2008
Sunday June 1, 2008
Yet Another
Cartoon Graveyard
Cartoon Graveyard
The conclusion of yesterday’s commentary on the May 30-31 Pennsylvania Lottery numbers:
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow:
“The fear balloons again inside his brain. It will not be kept down with a simple Fuck You…. A smell, a forbidden room, at the bottom edge of his memory. He can’t see it, can’t make it out. Doesn’t want to. It is allied with the Worst Thing.
He knows what the smell has to be: though according to these papers it would have been too early for it, though he has never come across any of the stuff among the daytime coordinates of his life, still, down here, back here in the warm dark, among early shapes where the clocks and calendars don’t mean too much, he knows that’s what haunting him now will prove to be the smell of Imipolex G.
Then there’s this recent dream he is afraid of having again. He was in his old room, back home. A summer afternoon of lilacs and bees and
286”
What are we to make of this enigmatic 286? (No fair peeking at page 287.)
One possible meaning, given The Archivist‘s claim that “existence is infinitely cross-referenced”–
Page 286 of Ernest G. Schachtel, Metamorphosis: On the Conflict of Human Development and the Psychology of Creativity (first published in 1959), Hillsdale NJ and London, The Analytic Press, 2001 (chapter– “On Memory and Childhood Amnesia”):
“Both Freud and Proust speak of the autobiographical [my italics] memory, and it is only with regard to this memory that the striking phenomenon of childhood amnesia and the less obvious difficulty of recovering any past experience may be observed.”
The concluding “summer afternoon of lilacs and bees” suggests that 286 may also be a chance allusion to the golden afternoon of Disney’s Alice in Wonderland. (Cf. St. Sarah’s Day, 2008)
Some may find the Disney afternoon charming; others may see it as yet another of Paul Simon’s dreaded cartoon graveyards.
More tastefully, there is poem 286 in the 1919 Oxford Book of English Verse– “Love.”
For a midrash on this poem, see Simone Weil, who became acquainted with the poem by chance:
“I always prefer saying chance rather than Providence.”
— Simone Weil, letter of about May 15, 1942
Weil’s brother André might prefer Providence (source of the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society.)
(Photo from Providence)
Related material:
Log24, December 20, 2003–
White, Geometric, and Eternal—
White, Geometric, and Eternal—
A description in Gravity’s Rainbow of prewar Berlin as “white and geometric” suggested, in combination with a reference elsewhere to “the eternal,” a citation of the following illustration of the concept “white, geometric, and eternal”–
For more on the mathematical significance of this figure, see (for instance) Happy Birthday, Hassler Whitney, and Combinatorics of Coxeter Groups, by Anders Björner and Francesco Brenti, Graduate Texts in Mathematics, vol. 231, Springer, New York, 2005.
This book is reviewed in the current issue (July 2008) of the above-mentioned Providence Bulletin.
The review in the Bulletin discusses reflection groups in continuous spaces.
For a more elementary approach, see Reflection Groups in Finite Geometry and Knight Moves: The Relativity Theory of Kindergarten Blocks.
See also a commentary on
the phrase “as a little child.”
the phrase “as a little child.”
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Thursday, April 7, 2005
Thursday April 7, 2005
ART WARS Toys
From Maureen Dowd’s New York Times column of June 9, 2002:
“The shape of the government is not as important as the policy of the government. If he makes the policy aggressive and pre-emptive, the president can conduct the war on terror from the National Gallery of Art.”
Last year’s suggested ART WARS toy:
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Today’s birthdays: Francis Ford Coppola and From MindfulGroup.com:
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The Coliseum Builder Block System can be used to recreate the Roman Coliseum. Reenact ancient Gladiator matches and bring Ancient Rome into your home. 
This year’s suggested ART WARS toy:
To order, see the
Amazing Music Box & Gifts Company.
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Wednesday, April 7, 2004
Wednesday April 7, 2004
Today’s birthdays:
Francis Ford Coppola and
Russell Crowe.
From MindfulGroup.com:
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Welcome to our imaginative and inspiring toy catalog! Today is Wednesday 7-April 2004. On this day in 30 Jesus crucified by Roman troops in Jerusalem (scholars’ estimate) What you will discover in this site is what we have been able to find in our everlasting search for the most original, innovative, amusing and mind bending toys from around the world. Have Fun. Coliseum Tell me more |
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Tuesday, April 15, 2003
Tuesday April 15, 2003
Green and Burning
After posting the 2:42 PM entry at a public library this afternoon, I picked up the following at a “Friends of the Library” used-book sale:
The Green and Burning Tree:
On the Writing and Enjoyment
of Children’s Books,
by Eleanor Cameron (Little, Brown and Company, Boston and Toronto, 1969).
Cameron, on page 73, gives the source of her title; it is from the Mabinogion:
“And they saw a tall tree by the side of the river, one half of which was in flames from the root to the top, and the other half was green and in full leaf.”
Cameron finds the meaning of this symbol in Dylan Thomas: His Life and Work, by John Ackerman (Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 6:
“Another important feature of the old Welsh poetry is an awareness of the dual nature of reality, of unity in disunity, of the simultaneity of life and death, of time as an eternal moment rather than as something with a past and future.”
For part of a Nobel Prize lecture on this topic — time as an eternal moment — see Architecture of Eternity, a journal note from December 8, 2002.
That lecture is from an author, Octavio Paz, who wrote in Spanish. Here are some other words in that language:
Mi verso es de un verde claro,
Y de un carmín encendido.My verse is a clear green,
And a burning crimson.
These lyrics to the song “Guantanamera” (see Palm Sunday) were on my mind this afternoon when Cameron’s book caught my eye.
Green and crimson are, of course, also the colors of Christmas, or “Christ Mass.” In view of the fact that Cameron’s book is about children’s literature, this leads, like it or not, to the following meditation.
From a religious site:
Matthew 18:3 – And said, Truly I say to you, Unless you are converted, and become like little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Mark 10:15 – Truly I say to you, Whoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall not enter it at all.
Luke 18:17 – Truly I say to you, Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall by no means enter it.
A meditation from a less religious site:
“What I tell you three times is true.”
Finally, from what I now consider
- in view of the song lyrics quoted above,
- in view of the fact that it deals with a Cuban movie also titled “Guantanamera,”
- in view of Cameron’s remarks on Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal” (p. 129), and
- in view of my April 7 entry on mathematics and art,
to be an extremely religious site, a picture:
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