A review of Beautiful Mathematics for 8 PM.
The corrected index the reviewer links to is here.
As a June 1 post shows, it is not corrected enough .
The review is dated March 16, 2012.
See this journal on that date.
See also Good Bye, Marty.
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Eight is a Gate
Comments Off on Eight is a Gate
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Eight is a Gate*
For Saint Irving
* For one interpretation of this phrase, see
Sicilian Reflections (from this year's Feast
of St. Irving Berlin on his dies natalis ).
Comments Off on Eight is a Gate*
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Eight is a Gate, continued
Jeanne-Claude, Collaborator With Christo, Dies at 74
See Feb. 13, 2005, and Feb. 16, 2005:
Click the above for source (pdf).
A part of the installation by
Christo and Jeanne-Claude,
“The Gates.” Photo by
Nicole Bengiveno in
The New York Times.
Comments Off on Eight is a Gate, continued
Sunday, January 3, 2021
Monday, September 4, 2017
Labor Date
(A sequel to the previous post, Up to Date)
"Dr. Sekler lectured around the world, but one trip proved life-changing.
In 1962, the year he married, Dr. Sekler made his first trip to Nepal.
'It was the way it had been for centuries — a beautiful valley filled with
happy, peaceful people. It seemed like Shangri-La,' he told the Harvard
Gazette in 2004."
— Bryan Marquard in The Boston Globe today
See also "Eight is a gate" in this journal.
Comments Off on Labor Date
Saturday, July 2, 2016
Wednesday, June 22, 2016
Fragments Against My Ruins, by Odd Thomas
- "Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read"
- "Alpha Dog"
- "B. J. Leggett is professor emeritus at UT Knoxville"
- "Seven is Heaven, Eight is a Gate, Nine is a Vine"
Update of about 6:40 AM ET on June 22, 2016 —
"Que cantaba el rey David." Happy birthday to Kris Kristofferson.
Comments Off on Fragments Against My Ruins, by Odd Thomas
Sunday, March 20, 2016
Where
"Where indeed might the literary scholar expect to find,
if not in literature, the measure of modern thought?"
— "Ruins of the Ogdoad," by Michael Keefer
"Seven is Heaven, Eight is a Gate, Nine is a Vine."
— Mnemonic rhyme; author anonymous
Comments Off on Where
Friday, November 6, 2015
Girard’s Transition
Comments Off on Girard’s Transition
Saturday, September 20, 2014
Review
See “Seven is Heaven, Eight is a Gate” in this journal.
For greater detail, see “Seven is Heaven” and “Eight is a Gate” separately.
Comments Off on Review
Friday, April 4, 2014
Eight Gate
From a Huffington Post discussion of aesthetics by Colm Mulcahy
of Spelman College, Atlanta:
"The image below on the left… is… overly simplistic, and lacks reality:
It's all a matter of perspective: the problem here is that opposite sides
of the cube, which are parallel in real life, actually look parallel in the
left image! The image on the right is better…."
A related discussion: Eight is a Gate.
Comments Off on Eight Gate
Thursday, June 13, 2013
Gate
"Eight is a Gate." — Mnemonic rhyme
Today's previous post, Window, showed a version
of the Chinese character for "field"—
This suggests a related image—
The related image in turn suggests…
Unlike linear perspective, axonometry has no vanishing point,
and hence it does not assume a fixed position by the viewer.
This makes axonometry 'scrollable'. Art historians often speak of
the 'moving' or 'shifting' perspective in Chinese paintings.
Axonometry was introduced to Europe in the 17th century by
Jesuits returning from China.
As was the I Ching. A related structure:
Comments Off on Gate
Friday, November 2, 2012
By Candlelight
Comments Off on By Candlelight
Friday, January 20, 2012
Chess
| Saturday, November 12, 2005
— m759 @ 8:00 PM (continued)
“… problems are the poetry of chess. |
Comments Off on Chess
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Cliff Robertson
Comments Off on Cliff Robertson
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Some Like It in the Pot
Seven is Heaven, Eight is a Gate, Nine is a Vine…
"And the serpent's eyes shine…."
Comments Off on Some Like It in the Pot
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Eightgate
"Eight is a gate."
— This journal, December 2002
Tralfamadorian Structure
in Slaughterhouse-Five
includes the following passage:
“…the nonlinear characterization of Billy Pilgrim
emphasizes that he is not simply an established
identity who undergoes a series of changes but
all the different things he is at different times.”
This suggests that the above structure be viewed
as illustrating not eight parts but rather
8! = 40,320 parts.
See also April 2, 2003.
Happy birthday to John Huston and
happy dies natalis to Richard Burton.
Comments Off on Eightgate
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Walden for Jews
“Orthodox Jews are disappearing from Jerusalem. One moment they are praying at the Western Wall, and in the blink of an eye, they seem to evaporate…. In order to build the Third Temple while being respectful of the Islamic structures on the Temple Mount, the Jews have discovered a way to access a fourth spatial dimension. They will build the Third Temple invisibly ‘above’ the Temple Mount and ‘above’ the Mosque in the direction of the fourth dimension.”
— Clifford Pickover, description of his novel Jews in Hyperspace
“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
— Henry David Thoreau, conclusion of Walden
Related material: Log24 entries, morning and evening of June 11, 2009, “Text” (June 22, 2009), and Salomon Bochner‘s remarks on space in “Eight is a Gate” (Feb. 26, 2008).
Comments Off on Walden for Jews
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Wednesday January 14, 2009
Eight is a Gate
From the most highly
rated negative review:
“I never did figure out
what ‘The Eight’ was.”
Various approaches
to this concept
(click images for details):
Comments Off on Wednesday January 14, 2009
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Sunday November 16, 2008
Art and Lies
Observations suggested by an article on author Lewis Hyde– "What is Art For?"– in today's New York Times Magazine:
Margaret Atwood (pdf) on Lewis Hyde's
Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art —
"Trickster," says Hyde, "feels no anxiety when he deceives…. He… can tell his lies with creative abandon, charm, playfulness, and by that affirm the pleasures of fabulation." (71) As Hyde says, "… almost everything that can be said about psychopaths can also be said about tricksters," (158), although the reverse is not the case. "Trickster is among other things the gatekeeper who opens the door into the next world; those who mistake him for a psychopath never even know such a door exists." (159)
What is "the next world"? It might be the Underworld….
The pleasures of fabulation, the charming and playful lie– this line of thought leads Hyde to the last link in his subtitle, the connection of the trickster to art. Hyde reminds us that the wall between the artist and that American favourite son, the con-artist, can be a thin one indeed; that craft and crafty rub shoulders; and that the words artifice, artifact, articulation and art all come from the same ancient root, a word meaning to join, to fit, and to make. (254) If it’s a seamless whole you want, pray to Apollo, who sets the limits within which such a work can exist. Tricksters, however, stand where the door swings open on its hinges and the horizon expands: they operate where things are joined together, and thus can also come apart.
Related material:
The Trickster
and the Paranormal
and
Martin Gardner on
a disappearing cube —
|
"What happened to that… cube?"
Apollinax laughed until his eyes teared. "I'll give you a hint, my dear. Perhaps it slid off into a higher dimension." "Are you pulling my leg?" "I wish I were," he sighed. "The fourth dimension, as you know, is an extension along a fourth coordinate perpendicular to the three coordinates of three-dimensional space. Now consider a cube. It has four main diagonals, each running from one corner through the cube's center to the opposite corner. Because of the cube's symmetry, each diagonal is clearly at right angles to the other three. So why shouldn't a cube, if it feels like it, slide along a fourth coordinate?" — "Mr. Apollinax Visits New York," by Martin Gardner, Scientific American, May 1961, reprinted in The Night is Large |
For such a cube, see
ashevillecreative.com
this illustration in
The Religion of Cubism
(and the four entries
preceding it —
Log24, May 9, 2003).
Beware of Gardner's
"clearly" and other lies.
Comments Off on Sunday November 16, 2008
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Sunday November 9, 2008
“Beauty is a riddle.”
— Dostoevsky
“Seven is Heaven
Eight is a Gate
Nine is a Vine”
— Folk rhyme
Comments Off on Sunday November 9, 2008
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Saturday June 21, 2008
For Mary Gaitskill
(See Eight is a Gate and
Faith, Doubt, Art, and
The New Yorker.)
A sructure from
today's previous entry:
|
Everyone comes to Rick's.
Comments Off on Saturday June 21, 2008
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Tuesday April 8, 2008
Eight is a Gate
Part I:
Part II:
This figure is related to
the mathematics of
reflection groups.
Part III:
“The capacity of music to operate simultaneously along horizontal and vertical axes, to proceed simultaneously in opposite directions (as in inverse canons), may well constitute the nearest that men and women can come to absolute freedom. Music does ‘keep time’ for itself and for us.”
— George Steiner in Grammars of Creation
Inverse Canon —
From Werner Icking Music Archive:
Bach, Fourteen Canons
on the First Eight Notes
of the Goldberg Ground,
No. 11 —
At a different site —
an mp3 of the 14 canons.
That Crown of Thorns,
by Timothy A. Smith
Comments Off on Tuesday April 8, 2008
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Tuesday February 26, 2008
Eight is a Gate (continued)
|
Tom Stoppard, Jumpers:
"Heaven, how can I believe in Heaven?" she sings at the finale. "Just a lying rhyme for seven!"
"To begin at the beginning: Is God?…" [very long pause]
|
|
From "Space," by Salomon Bochner
Makom. Our term “space” derives from the Latin, and is thus relatively late. The nearest to it among earlier terms in the West are the Hebrew makom and the Greek topos (τόπος). The literal meaning of these two terms is the same, namely “place,” and even the scope of connotations is virtually the same (Theol. Wörterbuch…, 1966). Either term denotes: area, region, province; the room occupied by a person or an object, or by a community of persons or arrangements of objects. But by first occurrences in extant sources, makom seems to be the earlier term and concept. Apparently, topos is attested for the first time in the early fifth century B.C., in plays of Aeschylus and fragments of Parmenides, and its meaning there is a rather literal one, even in Parmenides. Now, the Hebrew book Job is more or less contemporary with these Greek sources, but in chapter 16:18 occurs in a rather figurative sense:
Late antiquity was already debating whether this makom is meant to be a “hiding place” or a “resting place” (Dhorme, p. 217), and there have even been suggestions that it might have the logical meaning of “occasion,” “opportunity.” Long before it appears in Job, makom occurs in the very first chapter of Genesis, in:
This biblical account is more or less contemporary with Hesiod's Theogony, but the makom of the biblical account has a cosmological nuance as no corresponding term in Hesiod. Elsewhere in Genesis (for instance, 22:3; 28:11; 28:19), makom usually refers to a place of cultic significance, where God might be worshipped, eventually if not immediately. Similarly, in the Arabic language, which however has been a written one only since the seventh century A.D., the term makām designates the place of a saint or of a holy tomb (Jammer, p. 27). In post-biblical Hebrew and Aramaic, in the first centuries A.D., makom became a theological synonym for God, as expressed in the Talmudic sayings: “He is the place of His world,” and “His world is His place” (Jammer, p. 26). Pagan Hellenism of the same era did not identify God with place, not noticeably so; except that the One (τὸ ἕν) of Plotinus (third century A.D.) was conceived as something very comprehensive (see for instance J. M. Rist, pp. 21-27) and thus may have been intended to subsume God and place, among other concepts. In the much older One of Parmenides (early fifth century B.C.), from which the Plotinian One ultimately descended, the theological aspect was only faintly discernible. But the spatial aspect was clearly visible, even emphasized (Diels, frag. 8, lines 42-49). BIBLIOGRAPHY Paul Dhorme, Le livre de Job (Paris, 1926). H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th ed. (Berlin, 1938). Max Jammer, Concepts of Space… (Cambridge, Mass., 1954). J. M. Rist, Plotinus: The Road to Reality (Cambridge, 1967). Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament (1966), 8, 187-208, esp. 199ff.
|
Related material: In the previous entry — "Father Clark seizes at one place (page eight)
upon the fact that…."
Father Clark's reviewer (previous entry) called a remark by Father Clark "far fetched."
This use of "place" by the reviewer is, one might say, "near fetched."
Comments Off on Tuesday February 26, 2008
Monday, February 25, 2008
Monday February 25, 2008
A System of SymbolsA book from
Yale University Press
discussed in Log24
four years ago today:
Yale University Press
discussed in Log24
four years ago today:
Click on image for details.
The book is titled
Inside Modernism:
Relativity Theory,
Cubism, Narrative.
For a narrative about relativity
and cubes, see Knight Moves.
Related material:
Geek chic in
this week’s New Yorker—
“… it takes a system of symbols
to make numbers precise–
to ‘crystallize’ them….”
— and a mnemonic for three
days in October 2006
following a memorial to
the Amish schoolchildren
slain that month:
Comments Off on Monday February 25, 2008
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Wednesday October 24, 2007
Adieu:
A Story for Dobbs
A Story for Dobbs
Internet Movie Database on screenwriter Lem Dobbs:
"Trivia:
Son of painter R.B. (Ron) Kitaj.
Took his pseudonym from the character Humphrey Bogart played
in 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.'"
October 21 was the day
that R. B. Kitaj died.
For what Kitaj called
"midrashic glosses"
on the numbers and
the lucky sums, see
4/30, 5/12, and
Eight is a Gate.
"We tell ourselves stories in order to live….
We interpret what we see, select the most workable of multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the 'ideas' with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.
Or at least we do for a while. I am talking here about a time when I began to doubt the premises of all the stories I had ever told myself, a common condition but one I found troubling."
"He has come to be fascinated… by the kabbalah, finding in it parallels to the world of art and ideas. Every morning, after a long walk, he winds up at a Westwood café surrounded by pretty UCLA students where he studies the writings of Emmanuel Levinas, before working for an hour on his memoirs."
"There is no teacher
but the enemy."
— Orson Scott Card,
Ender's Game
Comments Off on Wednesday October 24, 2007
Saturday, July 7, 2007
Saturday July 7, 2007
Seven is Heaven
John Lahr, review of a production of Tom Stoppard’s “Jumpers”–
John Lahr, review of a production of Tom Stoppard’s “Jumpers”–
The play is about a philosophy professor, George, and his wife, Dotty, who “exudes a sumptuous sexuality…. She has a pert round head, high cheekbones, and a deep voice, which, like her acting, is full of playfulness and longing. George is lost in thought; Dotty is just lost. ‘Heaven, how can I believe in Heaven?’ she sings at the finale. ‘Just a lying rhyme for seven!’ She is promise and heartbreak in one.”
“With a name like Frigo…”
Related material:
Comments Off on Saturday July 7, 2007
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Thursday June 14, 2007
A Time
for Remembering
for Remembering
June 9, the birthday of
Aaron Sorkin, a writer
mentioned in recent
Log24 entries, was also
the birthday of writer
Patricia Cornwell.
An illustration
from that date:
Cornwell's first book was
a biography of
Ruth Bell Graham,
A Time for Remembering.
"Seven is heaven,
Eight is a gate,
Nine is a vine."
Comments Off on Thursday June 14, 2007
Monday, October 9, 2006
Monday October 9, 2006
ART WARS:
To Apollo
To Apollo
“This is the garden of Apollo,
the field of Reason….”
John Outram, architect
To Apollo (10/09/02)
Art Wars: Apollo and Dionysus (10/09/02)
Balanchine’s Birthday (01/09/03)
Art Theory for Yom Kippur (10/05/03)
A Form (05/22/04)
Ineluctable (05/27/04)
A Form, continued (06/05/04)
Parallelisms (06/06/04)
Ado (06/25/04)
Deep Game (06/26/04)
Gameplayers of Zen (06/27/04)
And So To Bed (06/29/04)
Translation Plane for Rosh Hashanah (09/15/04)
Derrida Dead (10/09/04)
The Nine (11/09/04)
From Tate to Plato (11/19/04)
Art History (05/11/05)
A Miniature Rosetta Stone (08/06/05)
High Concept (8/23/05)
High Concept, Continued (8/24/05)
Analogical Train of Thought (8/25/05)
Today’s Sermon: Magical Thinking (10/09/05)
Balance (10/31/05)
Matrix (11/01/05)
Seven is Heaven, Eight is a Gate (11/12/05)
Nine is a Vine (11/12/05)
Apollo and Christ (12/02/05)
Hamilton’s Whirligig (01/05/06)
Cross (01/06/06)
On Beauty (01/26/06)
Sunday Morning (01/29/06)
Centre (01/29/06)
New Haven (01/29/06)
Washington Ballet (02/05/06)
Catholic Schools Sermon (02/05/06)
The Logic of Apollo (02/05/06)
Game Boy (08/06/06)
Art Wars Continued: The Krauss Cross (09/13/06)
Art Wars Continued: Pandora’s Box (09/16/06)
The Pope in Plato’s Cave (09/16/06)
Today’s Birthdays (09/26/06)
Symbology 101 (09/26/06)
Comments Off on Monday October 9, 2006
Monday, July 31, 2006
Monday July 31, 2006
For the feast of
St. Ignatius Loyola…
Final Arrangements,
continued:
“Now you has jazz.”
– High Society, 1956
— Today’s online New York Times
|
Also from today’s 
Kurt Kreuger
in the 1945 film
“Paris Underground.” Kurt Kreuger,
a German-born actor
who reluctantly played
Nazi soldiers
in many films
about World War II,
died July 12 in
Beverly Hills, Calif.
He was 89.
|
Log24, Wednesday, Band Numbers “Some friends — David |
Related material:
A Log24 entry commemorating
the murder of six Jesuits
in El Salvador.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Wednesday July 12, 2006
Band Numbers
“Some friends of mine
are in this band…”
— David Auburn, Proof
Seven is Heaven,
Eight is a Gate,
Nine is a Vine.
Comments Off on Wednesday July 12, 2006
Monday, July 10, 2006
Monday July 10, 2006
An obituary in this morning's New York Times suggests a flashback. The Times says that Paul Nelson, 69, a music critic once famously ripped off by the young Bobby Zimmerman, was found dead in his Manhattan apartment last Wednesday. Here is a Log24 entry for that date. (The obituary, by Jon Pareles, notes that Nelson "prized hard-boiled detective novels and film noir.")
|
Wednesday, July 5, 2006 7:35 PM
Dance of the Numbers
"… in the mode of
"For Bach, as Sellars explains, |
Comments Off on Monday July 10, 2006
Wednesday, July 5, 2006
Wednesday July 5, 2006
Dance of the Numbers
continued–
“… in the mode of a film noir murder mystery“
“For Bach, as Sellars explains,
death is not an exit but an entrance.”
Seven is Heaven,
Eight is a Gate,
Nine is a Vine.
Sunday, April 2, 2006
Sunday April 2, 2006
Miracle
Looking for a Miracle:
The Beatification of John Paul II
Background:
| Preface:
Part I: Part II: |
Today’s lottery in the
State of Grace
(Kelly, of Philadelphia)–
Mid-day: 008
Evening: 373.
Done.
Comments Off on Sunday April 2, 2006
Friday, March 31, 2006
Friday March 31, 2006
Reason and Rhyme
"Philosophers ponder the idea of identity: what it is to give something a name on Monday and have it respond to that name on Friday…."
— Bernard Holland in
The New York Times
Monday, May 20, 1996
Related material:
and, from Monday,
March 27, 2006–
March 27, 2006–
Today's Pennsylvania lottery:
Mid-Day: 888
See today's noon entry
and Eight is a Gate.
Evening: 557
See
Dogma in the State of Grace,
Is Nothing Sacred?,
and, from page 557 of
Webster's
New World Dictionary,
College Edition, 1960:
"flower"
Birds, Beasts & Flowers
As performed by
Princess Grace of Monaco
Presented at
St James's Palace, London,
on 22nd November 1978
in the presence of Her Majesty,
Queen Elizabeth
The Queen Mother
St James's Palace, London,
on 22nd November 1978
in the presence of Her Majesty,
Queen Elizabeth
The Queen Mother
Comments Off on Friday March 31, 2006
Sunday, December 25, 2005
Sunday December 25, 2005
Eight is a Gate
(continued)
(continued)
Compare and contrast:
Click on pictures for details.
"… die Schönheit… [ist] die
richtige Übereinstimmung
der Teile miteinander
und mit dem Ganzen."
"Beauty is the proper conformity
of the parts to one another
and to the whole."
— Werner Heisenberg,
"Die Bedeutung des Schönen
in der exakten Naturwissenschaft,"
address delivered to the
Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts,
Munich, 9 Oct. 1970, reprinted in
Heisenberg's Across the Frontiers,
translated by Peter Heath,
Harper & Row, 1974
Comments Off on Sunday December 25, 2005
Friday, December 16, 2005
Friday December 16, 2005
Jesus vs. the Goddess:
A Brief Chronology
A Brief Chronology
In 1946, Robert Graves published “King Jesus, an historical novel based on the theory and Graves’ own historical conjecture that Jesus was, in fact, the rightful heir to the Israelite throne… written while he was researching and developing his ideas for The White Goddess.”
In 1948, C. S. Lewis finished the first draft of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, a novel in which one of the main characters is “the White Witch.”
In 1948, Robert Graves published The White Goddess.
In 1949, Robert Graves published Seven Days in New Crete [also titled Watch the North Wind Rise], “a novel about a social distopia in which Goddess worship is (once again?) the dominant religion.”
Lewis died on November 22, 1963, the day John F. Kennedy was killed.
Related material:
Log24, December 10, 2005
Graves died on December 7 (Pearl Harbor Day), 1985.
Related material:
Log24, December 7, 2005, and
Log24, December 11, 2005
Jesus died, some say, on April 7 in the year 30 A.D.
Related material:
Art Wars, April 7, 2003:
Geometry and Conceptual Art,Eight is a Gate, and
Plato’s Diamond
— Motto of
Plato’s Academy
“Plato is wary of all forms of rapture other than reason’s. He is most deeply leery of, because himself so susceptible to, the literary imagination. He speaks of it as a kind of holy madness or intoxication and goes on to link it to Eros, another derangement that joins us, but very dangerously, with the gods.”
“It’s all in Plato, all in Plato;
bless me, what do they
teach them at these schools?”
bless me, what do they
teach them at these schools?”
— C. S. Lewis in
the Narnia Chronicles
the Narnia Chronicles
“How much story do you want?”
— George Balanchine
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Saturday December 10, 2005
Roger Shattuck, Scholar, Is Dead at 82
In his honor, some excerpts from previous entries:
I just subscribed to The New York Review of Books online for another year,
prompted by my desire to read Roger Shattuck on Rimbaud….
"How did this poetic sensibility come to burn so bright?"
The Shattuck piece is from 1967, the year of The Doors' first album.
(See Death and the Spirit, Part II.)
|
The photo of Nicole Kidman
is from Globe Song
(Log24, Jan. 18, 2005).
The Times says Shattuck died
on Thursday (Dec. 8, 2005).
Here, from 4:00 AM on the
morning of Shattuck's death,
is a brief companion-piece
to Eight is a Gate:
|
From Carole A. Holdsworth, Tanner may have stated it best:
“V. is whatever lights you to
(Tony Tanner, page 36,
She's a mystery |
She's in midnight blue,
still the words ring true;
woman in blue
got a hold on you.
Comments Off on Saturday December 10, 2005
Saturday, November 12, 2005
Saturday November 12, 2005
Seven is Heaven,
Eight is a Gate
(continued)
Eight is a Gate
(continued)
“… problems are the poetry of chess.
They demand from the composer
the same virtues that characterize
all worthwhile art:
originality, invention,
harmony, conciseness,
complexity, and
splendid insincerity.”
Comments Off on Saturday November 12, 2005
Saturday, September 24, 2005
Saturday September 24, 2005
Parable
From this week’s New Yorker
and from Eight is a Gate:
From this week’s New Yorker
and from Eight is a Gate:
|
Parable: “A comparison or analogy. The word is simply a transliteration of the Greek word: parabolé (literally: ‘what is thrown beside’ or ‘juxtaposed’)….” |
|
Related material:
Comments Off on Saturday September 24, 2005
Saturday, April 30, 2005
Saturday April 30, 2005
Nine is a Vine,
continued
Larry Gelbart on the film
Up Close and Personal:
“A Brenda Starr is Born.”
continued
Larry Gelbart on the film
Up Close and Personal:
“A Brenda Starr is Born.”
Related material:
O’Hara’s Fingerpost,
Eight is a Gate,
Art Wars,
In the Details,
and the words
“White Christmas.”
Comments Off on Saturday April 30, 2005
Monday, February 28, 2005
Monday February 28, 2005
Terrain
On the 77th annual Academy Awards:
“… in the Sarabande of Suite 6 Ma’s phrasing suggests we are in the same spiritual terrain as Beethoven’s late quartets.”
Amen.
For more on Bach, quartets, and film, see Eight is a Gate and 8/8/04.
Comments Off on Monday February 28, 2005
Saturday, February 19, 2005
Saturday February 19, 2005
Highway
From previous Log24.net entries:
"There is no highway in the sky."
— Quotation attributed to
Albert Einstein.
(See Gotthard Günther's website
"Achilles and the Tortoise, Part 2".)
"Don't give up until you
Drink from the silver cup
And ride that highway in the sky."
— America, 1974
Stephen Yablo, draft of
"A Paradox of Existence,"
Nov. 8, 1998, section heading:
"III. Quine's way or the highway"
From that section:
"Burgess & Rosen begin their book A Subject with No Object with a relevant fable:
Finally, after years of waiting, it is your turn to put a question to the Oracle of Philosophy…you humbly approach and ask the question that has been consuming you for as long as you can remember: 'Tell me, O Oracle, what there is. What sorts of things exist?' To this the Oracle responds: 'What? You want the whole list? …I will tell you this: everything there is is concrete; nothing there is is abstract….'
Suppose we continue the fable a little. Impressed with what the Oracle has told you, you return to civilization to spread the concrete gospel. Your first stop is at [your school here]…."
The Concrete Gospel
of Donald E. Knuth:
of Donald E. Knuth:
In Hoc Signo
(from yesterday),
continued —
This holy icon
appeared at
N37°25.638'
W122°09.574'
on August 22, 2003,
at the Stanford campus.
See also
Cognitive Blending
and the Two Cultures.
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Tuesday February 15, 2005
Answer
“Are you now, or have you ever been?”
— Question posed to Philip Johnson,
entry of Feb. 12
entry of Feb. 12
“In the case of the Cartesian question, the answer is affirmative, and metaphysics has produced, in the four hundred years since, nothing much better than this. It is not only interesting but supremely practical. What could be more useful than having the means of convincing oneself that one exists whenever the question should arise?”
— Rebecca Goldstein,
Properties of Light
“… a nightshirted boy trying desperately to awake from the iridescent dizziness of dream life. Its ultimate vision was the incandescence of a book or a box grown completely transparent and hollow. This is, I believe, it : not the crude anguish of physical death but the incomparable pangs of the mysterious mental maneuver needed to pass from one state of being to another.”
— Vladimir Nabokov,
Transparent Things
Transparent Things
“Le terme que l’on traduit par dédicace est en japonais ekô, littéralement ‘se tourner vers’. Il est composé de deux idéogrammes, e qui signifie ‘tourner le dos, se tourner, revenir en arrière’ et kô, ‘faire face, s’adresser à’.”
For more on Goldstein, see
The New York Times,
Feb. 14, 2005, and
Eight is a Gate,
Dec. 19, 2002.
Comments Off on Tuesday February 15, 2005
Sunday, February 13, 2005
Sunday February 13, 2005
Eight is a Gate,
continued
“The eighth letter of the Hebrew alphabet is called ‘Chet’ (rhymes with ‘let’) and has the (light scraping) sound of ‘ch’ as in ‘Bach.'”
Sunday February 13, 2005
Eight is a Gate
“The old men know
when an old man dies.”
— Ogden Nash
“Heaven is a state,
a sort of metaphysical state.”
— John O’Hara, Hope of Heaven, 1938
But in a larger sense…
Mais il y a un autre sens dans la dédicace que je trouve plus profond encore. Il s’agit de se dédier soi-même. Le terme que l’on traduit par dédicace est en japonais ekô, littéralement “se tourner vers”. Il est composé de deux idéogrammes, e qui signifie “tourner le dos, se tourner, revenir en arrière” et kô, “faire face, s’adresser à”.
Dans l’école Tendai, on explique que ce terme possède trois sens:
– tourner le dos (e) aux phénomènes et faire face (kô) au principe;
– tourner le dos (e) au soi et faire face (kô) aux autres;
– tourner le dos (e) aux causes et faire face (kô) aux effets.
On pourrait dire regarder l’essentiel, regarder autrui et regarder le futur. Le terme évoque un retournement. Il s’agit d’aller à rebours de nos fonctionnements habituels, de bouleverser nos attitudes, se détourner de l’égocentrisme pour aller dans le sens de l’ouverture, ne plus se fourvoyer dans l’erreur mais s’ouvrir à la clarté.
Ekô a bien dans les textes bouddhistes un double sens, c’est à la fois dédier quelque chose comme la récitation d’un texte mais également se dédier soi-même. Dans cette deuxième attitude, c’est soi-même, tout entier, corps et esprit, qui est l’objet de la dédicace. Plus qu’on donne, on se donne. On trouve les deux sens chez Dôgen qui n’ignore pas le “transfert des mérites” mais qui sait que ekô se confond avec la voie de l’éveil. Il y a par exemple ce passage dans le Shôbôgenzô Zuimonki:
“Dans le bouddhisme, il y a ceux qui sont foncièrement doués d’amour et de compassion, de connaissance et de sagesse. Pour peu qu’ils étudient, ceux qui en sont dépourvus les réaliseront. Ils n’ont qu’à abandonner le corps et l’esprit, se dédier (ekô) dans le grand océan du bouddhisme, se reposer sur les enseignements du bouddhisme et ne pas rester dans les préjugés personnels.”
[Buppô ni wa, jihi chie mo yori sonawaru hito mo ari. Tatoi naki hito mo gaku sureba uru nari. Tada shinjin o tomoni hôge shite, buppô no daikai ni ekô shite, buppô no kyô ni makasete, shikiyoku o son zuru koto nakare.]
(Shôbôgenzô zuimonki, Edition populaire, cinquième cahier, première causerie)
Le français ne peut véritablement rendre la subtilité du choix des mots de Dôgen qui utilise des figures de style typiquement chinoises comme le chiasme, l’opposition et l’appariement. Il emploie des verbes d’état d’une part : se reposer, rester, de l’autre des verbes d’action, abandonner (hôge su, lit. “laisser choir”), se dédier (ekô su, lit. “se tourner vers”, qui a presque ici le sens de “se jeter”). Réaliser l’amour, la compassion, la connaissance et la sagesse nécessite une transformation, une conversion, un saut dans l’ailleurs. Ce dynamisme permet de quitter le soi égocentré pour entrer dans la dimension de l’éveil, ce que Dôgen appelle ici le bouddhisme.
Ce retournement, ekô, possède une double dimension, à la fois interne et externe. D’un point de vue intérieur, nous nous dédions à l’éveil, d’un point de vue extérieur, nous nous dédions aux autres. Mais l’intérieur et l’extérieur sont comme les deux faces d’une même feuille de papier.
— La dédicace universelle:
une causerie d’Eric Rommeluère
une causerie d’Eric Rommeluère
Comments Off on Sunday February 13, 2005
Tuesday, July 1, 2003
Tuesday July 1, 2003
Jew’s on First
This entry is dedicated to those worshippers of Allah who have at one time or another cried
“Itbah al-Yahud!” … Kill the Jew!
(See June 29 entries).
|
Dead at 78 Comedian Buddy Hackett died on Tuesday, July First, 2003, according to the New York Times. According to Bloomberg.com, he died Sunday or Monday. |
Associated Press
Buddy Hackett, |
| Whatever. We may imagine he has now walked, leading a parade of many other stand-up saints, into a bar. |
|
|
MIDRASH From my May 25 entry, Matrix of the Death God: R. M. Abraham’s Diversions and Pastimes, published by Constable and Company, London, in 1933, has the following magic square:
The Matrix of Abraham A summary of the religious import of the above from Princeton University Press: “Moslems of the Middle Ages were fascinated by pandiagonal squares with 1 in the center…. The Moslems thought of the central 1 as being symbolic of the unity of Allah. Indeed, they were so awed by that symbol that they often left blank the central cell on which the 1 should be positioned.” — Clifford A. Pickover, The Zen of Magic Squares, Circles, and Stars, Princeton U. Press, 2002, pp. 71-72 Other appearances of this religious icon on the Web include:
|
In the Picasso’s Birthday version, 22 of the 25 magic square cells are correlated with pictures on the “Class of ’91” cover of Rolling Stone magazine. Number 7 is Rod† Stewart. In accordance with the theological rhyme “Seven is heaven, eight is a gate,” our site music for today is “Forever Young,” a tune made famous by Stewart.
† Roderick, actually — the name of the hero in “Madwoman of Chaillot”
Comments Off on Tuesday July 1, 2003
Tuesday, March 4, 2003
Tuesday March 4, 2003
Fearful Symmetry
I just Googled this phrase and found the following site, which turns out to be related to my previous entry on the Bead Game and the death of John P. Thompson.
Fearful Symmetry:
The Music Master’s Lecture,
by Daniel d’Quincy.
This in turn links to an excerpt from The Glass Bead Game that includes this passage:
“I suddenly realized that in the language, or at any rate in the spirit of the Glass Bead Game, everything actually was all-meaningful, that every symbol and combination of symbols led not hither and yon, not to single examples, experiments, and proofs, but into the center, the mystery and innermost heart of the world, into primal knowledge. Every transition from major to minor in a sonata, every transformation of a myth or a religious cult, every classical or artistic formulation was, I realized in that flashing moment, if seen with a truly meditative mind, nothing but a direct route into the interior of the cosmic mystery, where in the alternation between inhaling and exhaling, between heaven and earth, between Yin and Yang, holiness is forever being created.”
It is very easy to get dangerously confused about holiness, but here are some relevant quotes:
“You will have to allow me to digress a bit in order to bring ourselves to a sufficiently elevated perspective… I warn you, it will require an attitude of playfulness on your part. Our approach will aim more at sincerity than seriousness. The attitude I’m aiming at is best expressed, I suppose, in the playing of a unique game, known by its German name as Das Glasperlenspiel, and which we may translate as the Glass Bead Game.”
— Daniel d’Quincy, Fearful Symmetry
“7:11”
— God himself said this, at least according to the previous entry and to my Jan. 28 entry, State of the Communion.
“Seven is heaven.”
— See my web page Eight is a Gate.
“An excellent example of a ‘universal’ in the sense of Charles Williams, Jung, or Plato is Hexagram 11 in China’s 3,000-year-old classic, the I Ching:
 |
‘Heaven and earth unite: |
— S. H. Cullinane, Plato, Pegasus, and the Evening Star
Thus we may associate the numbers 7 and 11 with the notions of heaven and peace; for a somewhat darker association of the time 7:11 with Kali as Time the Destroyer, see my last entry and also my previous entries
Fat Man and Dancing Girl (Feb. 18, 2003), and
Time and Eternity (Feb. 1, 2003).
Friday, February 21, 2003
Friday February 21, 2003
ART WARS:
All About Lilith
|
|
|
Sam Peckinpah (Feb. 21, 1925)
The New Yorker Magazine (Feb. 21, 1925)
Alan Rickman, 57
Kelsey Grammer, 48
Mary Chapin Carpenter, 45
Jennifer Love Hewitt, 24
Charlotte Church, 17
This list suggests that in an ideal future life Sam Peckinpah would direct, and The New Yorker review, a prequel to “All About Eve.”
Casting would be as follows:
Mary Chapin Carpenter as Margo Channing
(originally, Bette Davis)
Charlotte Church as Lilith, sister of Eve Harrington
(originally, Anne Baxter)
Jennifer Love Hewitt as Claudia Casswell
(originally, Marilyn Monroe)
Alan Rickman as Bill Sampson
(originally, Gary Merrill)
Kelsey Grammer as Addison DeWitt
(originally, George Sanders).
Since today is also the anniversary, according to Tom’s Book of Days, of Schultes’s identification of teonanacatl in 1939, the following classic painting, “ Caterpillar’s Mushroom,” by Brian Froud, might be adapted for a poster for our heavenly production*, to be titled, in accordance with celestial fairness doctrines,
* A footnote in memory of publicist/producer Jack Brodsky (“Romancing the Stone,” etc.), who died on Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2003 — See the website Eight is a Gate for the mystical significance of the number “78” in Judaism. The New Yorker and Sam Peckinpah were born 78 years ago today.
Comments Off on Friday February 21, 2003
Thursday, January 16, 2003
Thursday January 16, 2003
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
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 New York Times, Jan. 16, 2003:‘Dance of the Vampires,’
|
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.
Comments Off on Thursday January 16, 2003
Monday, December 16, 2002
Monday December 16, 2002
Rebecca Goldstein
at Heaven’s Gate
This entry is in gratitude for Rebecca Goldstein’s
excellent essay
in The New York Times of December 16, 2002.
She talks about the perennial conflict between two theories of truth that Richard Trudeau called the “story theory” and the “diamond theory.” My entry of December 13, 2002, “Rhyme Scheme,” links the word “real” to an article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy that contains the following:
“According to a platonist about arithmetic, the truth of the sentence ‘7 is prime’ entails the existence of an abstract object, the number 7. This object is abstract because it has no spatial or temporal location, and is causally inert. A platonic realist about arithmetic will say that the number 7 exists and instantiates the property of being prime independently of anyone’s beliefs, linguistic practices, conceptual schemes, and so on. A certain kind of nominalist rejects the existence claim which the platonic realist makes: there are no abstract objects, so sentences such as ‘7 is prime’ are false…”
This discussion of “sevenness,” along with the discussion of “eightness” in my December 14, 2002, note on Bach, suggest that I supply a transcription of a note in my paper journal from 2001 that deals with these matters.
From a paper journal note of October 5, 2001:
|
The 2001 Silver Cup Award Glynis Johns is 78 today. “Seven is heaven, “There is no highway in the sky.” “Don’t give up until you See also page |
Added 12/17/02: See also
the portrait of Rebecca Goldstein in
Hadassah Magazine
Volume
78
Number 10
(June/July 1997).
For more on the Jewish propensity to
assign mystical significance to numbers, see
Rabbi Zwerin’s Kol Nidre Sermon.
For the significance of “seven” in Judaism, see
Zayin: The Woman of Valor.
For the significance of “eight” in Judaism, see
Chet: The Life Dynamic.
For the cabalistic significance of
“Seven is heaven, Eight is a gate,”
note that Zayin, Seven, signifies
“seven chambers of Paradise”
and that Chet, Eight, signifies
the “gateway to infinity.”
For the significance of the date 12.17, see
Tet: The Concealed Good.
Comments Off on Monday December 16, 2002