… there is a path. — Malcolm Lowry
Sunday, November 2, 2014
Wednesday, November 20, 2024
“Great Unconscious Gravity” *
"Right through hell there is a path" — Malcolm Lowry
An illustration from a post of April 13, 2009 —
That date was suggested by . . .
The "Amen Corner" tune was suggested by the life of
a Bee Gees drummer who died recently, by the title of
a book he wrote — You Should Be Dancing — and by
a scene (S1E2) in the Max miniseries "The Penguin" —
"Shit like this, the pain of it, you gotta be careful…
'cause it'll eat you alive if you let it.
It's a helluva lot more fun to dance."
* Phrase from a passage by Chesterton that led, in a
post of April 13, 2009, to the above image of Reba.
Monday, November 11, 2024
Echo Chamber: “The Room Outside of Time”*
"… as Gombrich well knew, Warburg also
constantly regrets the 'loss' of this 'thought-space' …"
Echo from the Pasaje Bella Vista in Cuernavaca —
“We keep coming back and coming back
To the real: to the hotel instead of the hymns….”
— Wallace Stevens
— Postcard from eBay
|
From Under the Volcano, by Malcolm Lowry, 1947, Chapter I:
Faustus is gone: regard his hellish fall —
Shaken, M. Laruelle replaced the book on the table… he reached to the floor for a folded sheet of paper that had fluttered out of it. He picked the paper up between two fingers and unfolded it, turning it over. Hotel Bella Vista, he read. There were really two sheets of uncommonly thin hotel notepaper…. I sit now in a little room off the bar at four-thirty in the morning drinking ochas and then mescal and writing this on some Bella Vista notepaper I filched the other night…. But this is worst of all, to feel your soul dying. I wonder if it is because to-night my soul has really died that I feel at the moment something like peace. Or is it because right through hell there is a path, as Blake well knew, and though I may not take it, sometimes lately in dreams I have been able to see it? …And this is how I sometimes think of myself, as a great explorer who has discovered some extraordinary land from which he can never return to give his knowledge to the world: but the name of this land is hell. It is not Mexico of course but in the heart. |
* "The room outside of time" is a recurring theme in "The Resort."
Sunday, September 1, 2024
Annals of Secret Architecture: The Chrysler Thrusts
The Cinematic Imagination:
“Frida” Meets “Under the Volcano”
A scene from “Frida” and a scene from the Day of the Dead
festival, Cuernavaca, 30 October 2004.
For Diego Rivera (and Francis Ford Coppola) . . .
"Beyond his mathematics was the unknown. Were his final writings,
an avalanche of 70,000 pages in an often near-illegible hand,
the aimless scribblings of a madman? Or had the anchorite of Lasserre
made one last thrust into the secret architecture of the universe?"
— Phil Hoad in The Guardian , "Sat 31 Aug 2024 06.00 EDT"
Some impressive Chrysler Building thrusts . . .
Related cinematic entertainment . . .
Comments Off on Annals of Secret Architecture: The Chrysler Thrusts
Saturday, August 3, 2024
Seeking the Path*
"Right through hell there is a path . . . ." — Malcolm Lowry
This quotation is from a Log24 search for "1966."
That search was suggested by the now-streaming film
"MaXXXine" and by . . .
* Title of a book by Nanavira Thera.
Comments Off on Seeking the Path*
Monday, February 26, 2024
Once Upon a Time, Eureka
"Right through hell there is a path…" — Under the Volcano
Some Context:
Comments Off on Once Upon a Time, Eureka
Monday, December 11, 2023
Programming for Language Animals*
From this journal on December 7th, the first night of Hannukah 2023 —
|
Other "Styx"-related material posted here earlier today . . .
Note that the above Styx communications protocol should not be
"Right through hell there is a path . . . ." — Malcolm Lowry |
From zdnet.com two days earlier —
|
Linus Torvalds on the state of Linux today
" Looking ahead, Hohndel said, we must talk about
Torvalds — "We actually need autocorrects on steroids. — zdnet.com, |
Midrash —
Comments Off on Programming for Language Animals*
Thursday, December 7, 2023
Craft
Other "Styx"-related material posted here earlier today . . .
Note that the above Styx communications protocol should not be
confused with the much newer Styx operating system —
"Right through hell there is a path . . . ." — Malcolm Lowry
Comments Off on Craft
Wednesday, April 7, 2021
For Child Buyers
Recent posts on hotels and education suggest a review.
See “Child Buyer” in this journal.
From John Hersey’s The Child Buyer (1960):
“I was wondering about that this morning…
About forgetting. I’ve always had an idea that
each memory was a kind of picture,
an insubstantial picture. I’ve thought of it as
suddenly coming into your mind when you need it,
something you’ve seen, something you’ve heard,
then it may stay awhile, or else it flies out, then
maybe it comes back another time….
If all the pictures went out, if I forgot everything,
where would they go? Just out into the air? Into the sky?
Back home around my bed, where my dreams stay?”
“We keep coming back and coming back
To the real: to the hotel instead of the hymns….”
— Wallace Stevens
— Postcard from eBay
From Under the Volcano, by Malcolm Lowry, 1947, Chapter I:
|
Comments Off on For Child Buyers
Monday, November 30, 2020
Space Exploration
Comments Off on Space Exploration
Sunday, November 25, 2018
At Eternity’s Gate
A New York Times theater review from 2002
is now accompanied by an ad for a current film,
"At Eternity's Gate." (Click to enlarge.)
"At Eternity's Gate" opened November 16th, 2018.
From this journal on that date —
"Right through hell there is a path." — Malcolm Lowry
Comments Off on At Eternity’s Gate
Tuesday, June 26, 2018
Flores
Comments Off on Flores
Sunday, December 10, 2017
Interlacing, Interweaving
The above title should be sung to the following tune —
"Right through hell
there is a path…."
— Malcolm Lowry,
Under the Volcano
Comments Off on Interlacing, Interweaving
Friday, February 26, 2016
Overarching
"The study of social memory allows scholars to
understand how different memories form within
a collective group, thus exploring the societal
and ideological elements of disparate groups
that form the over-arching memory of Melkisedeq."
— The Melkisedeq Memoirs , by Cale Staley,
2015 master's thesis at the University of Iowa
Elements of groups that I prefer —
"Right through hell
there is a path…."
— Malcolm Lowry,
Under the Volcano
Comments Off on Overarching
Friday, February 12, 2016
The Game
"Right through hell
there is a path…."
— Malcolm Lowry,
Under the Volcano
Comments Off on The Game
Saturday, July 25, 2015
Strange Loop
From an explanation of the Web app IFTTT —
"IF This Then That" —
"If you are a programmer you can think of it as a loop*
that checks for a certain condition… to run one or
multiple actions if the condition is met."
After Completion (from Friday night, and 1989) —
Advertisement —
"On February 19, 2015, IFTTT renamed
their original application to IF…."
From Tuesday's post on the death of E. L. Doctorow —
“…right through hell
there is a path…”
— Malcolm Lowry
* More precisely, a conditional or conditional loop .
Comments Off on Strange Loop
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
“Ragtime” Author Dies at 84
“…right through hell
there is a path…”
— Malcolm Lowry
Comments Off on “Ragtime” Author Dies at 84
Monday, April 4, 2011
Getting There
"Get there fast. Get there first."
— Motto in New York Times ad (obituaries section).
|
"Right through hell
|
 |
Comments Off on Getting There
Friday, March 25, 2011
Combinatorial Delight
See Margaret Atwood in this journal.
This link was suggested by the phrase "combinatorial* delight" in last night's quote from Nabokov, which also appears in Douglas Glover's review essay, "Her Life Entire," in Books in Canada , Volume 17, Number 7, October 1988—
Cat's Eye is Atwood's seventh novel. It is dense, intricate, and superb, as thematically diverse and complex as anything she has written. It is what you might expect from a writer at mid-career, mid-life: a portrait of the artist, a summation of what she knows about art and people. It is also an Atwoodian Under the Volcano , a vision of Toronto as Hell.
See also Under the Volcano and Toronto in this journal.
"Right through hell there is a path." –Under the Volcano
* Update: Corrected on Dec. 13, 2014, to "combinational delight."
Comments Off on Combinatorial Delight
Monday, August 2, 2010
Specific and Robust
The New York Times version of the philosophers' stone:
In the Times 's latest sermon from THE STONE, Gary Gutting, a professor of philosophy at Notre Dame, discusses
"…the specific and robust claims of Judaism, Christianity and Islam about how God is concretely and continually involved in our existence."
A search shows that Gutting's phrase "specific and robust" has many echoes in biotechnology, and a few in software development. The latter is of more interest to me than the former. (The poetically inclined might say that Professor Gutting's line of work is a sort of software development.)
"As a developer, you need a specific and robust set of development tools in the smallest and simplest package possible."
— EasyEclipse web page
Here are two notes on related material:
Specific— The Pit:
See a search for "harrowing of Hell" in this journal.
("…right through hell there is a path…." –Malcolm Lowry)
Robust— The Pendulum:
See a search for "Foucault's Pendulum" in this journal.
(“Others say it is a stone that posseses mysterious powers…. often depicted as a dazzling light. It’s a symbol representing power, a source of immense energy. It nourishes, heals, wounds, blinds, strikes down…. Some have thought of it as the philosopher’s stone of the alchemists….”
Those puzzled by why the NY Times would seek the opinions of a professor at a Catholic university may consult Gutting's home page.
He is an expert on the gay Communist Michel Foucault, a student of Althusser.
Comments Off on Specific and Robust
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Sunday June 28, 2009
Hell Path
“…right through hell
there is a path…”
— Malcolm Lowry
Related material:
This morning’s
New York Times obituaries…
…and The Restaurant Quarré in Berlin,
Comments Off on Sunday June 28, 2009
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Wednesday June 17, 2009
Back to the Real
Colum McCann on yesterday’s history:
“Fiction gives us access to a very real history.”
The Associated Press thought for today:
“Journalism allows its readers to witness history; fiction gives its readers an opportunity to live it.”
— John Hersey, American author (born on this date in 1914, died 1993).
From John Hersey’s The Child Buyer (1960):
“I was wondering about that this morning… About forgetting. I’ve always had an idea that each memory was a kind of picture, an insubstantial picture. I’ve thought of it as suddenly coming into your mind when you need it, something you’ve seen, something you’ve heard, then it may stay awhile, or else it flies out, then maybe it comes back another time…. If all the pictures went out, if I forgot everything, where would they go? Just out into the air? Into the sky? Back home around my bed, where my dreams stay?”
“We keep coming back and coming back
To the real: to the hotel instead of the hymns….”
— Wallace Stevens
Postcard from eBay
From Under the Volcano, by Malcolm Lowry, 1947, Chapter I:
|
Comments Off on Wednesday June 17, 2009
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Thursday October 9, 2008
First Draft
of History
of History
(Click to enlarge)
Deep Background:
From the Terrace…
of the Hotel Bella Vista
in Cuernavaca…
Related Material:
Midsummer Night
in the Garden
of Good and Evil
“Right through hell
there is a path…“
(Voice-over by
Richard Burton,
“Volcano,” 1976)
Comments Off on Thursday October 9, 2008
Saturday, August 5, 2006
Saturday August 5, 2006
John Huston
was born
100 years ago
on this date.
Huston directed
the film versions of
The Night of the Iguana
and
Under the Volcano.
"Borges' seminal short story
El jardin de senderos que se bifurcan
(The Garden of Forking Paths)
is an early example of
many worlds in fiction."
"Il faut cultiver notre jardin."
— Voltaire
Comments Off on Saturday August 5, 2006
Sunday, September 5, 2004
Sunday September 5, 2004
Symmetry and Change
in the Dreamtime
Notes from the Journal
of Steven H. Cullinane
Summary:
| Aug 31 2004 07:31:01 PM |
Early Evening, Shining Star |
 |
| Sep 01 2004 09:00:35 AM |
Words and Images |
 |
| Sep 01 2004 12:07:28 PM |
Whale Rider |
 |
| Sep 02 2004 11:11:42 AM |
Heaven and Earth |
 |
| Sep 02 2004 07:00:23 PM |
Whale Road |
 |
| Cinderella’s Slipper |
 |
|
| Sep 03 2004 10:01:56 AM |
Another September Morn |
 |
| Noon |
 |
|
| De Nada |  |
|
| Ite, Missa Est |  |
Symmetry and Change, Part 1…
Early Evening,
Shining Star
Hexagram 01
The Creative:
The Image
Heaven
Heaven
The movement of heaven
is full of power.
Click on picture
for details.
The Clare Lawler Prize
for Literature goes to…
|
For the thoughts on time |
Symmetry and Change, Part 2…
Words and Images
Hexagram 35
Progress:
The Image
Fire
Earth
The sun rises over the earth.
|
“Oh, my Lolita. I have only words “This is the best toy train set “As the quotes above by Nabokov and Welles suggest, we need to be able to account for the specific functions available to narrative in each medium, for the specific elements that empirical creators will ‘play with’ in crafting their narratives.” |
For
James Whale
and
William French Anderson —
Words
In the Spirit of
Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs:
Stay for just a while…
Stay, and let me look at you.
It’s been so long, I hardly knew you.
Standing in the door…
Stay with me a while.
I only want to talk to you.
We’ve traveled halfway ’round the world
To find ourselves again.
September morn…
We danced until the night
became a brand new day,
Two lovers playing scenes
from some romantic play.
September morning still can
make me feel this way.
Look at what you’ve done…
Why, you’ve become a grown-up girl…
— Neil Diamond
Images
In the Spirit of
September Morn:
The Last Day of Summer:
Photographs by Jock Sturges
“In 1990, the FBI entered Sturges’s studio and seized his work, claiming violation of child pornography laws.”
Related material:
and
Log24 entries of
Aug. 15, 2004.
Those interested in the political implications of Diamond’s songs may enjoy Neil Performs at Kerry Fundraiser.
I personally enjoyed this site’s description of Billy Crystal’s remarks, which included “a joke about former President Clinton’s forthcoming children’s
“Puff, puff, woo, woo, off we go!”
Symmetry and Change, Part 3…
Hexagram 28
Preponderance of
the Great:
The Image
Lake
Wind
The lake rises
above the trees.
“Congratulations to Clare Lawler, who participated very successfully in the recently held Secondary Schools Judo Championships in Wellington.”
For an explanation of this entry’s title, see the previous two entries and
Oxford Word
(Log24, July 10, 2004)
Symmetry and Change, Part 4…
Heaven and Earth
Hexagram 42
Increase:
The Image
Wind
Thunder
Wind and thunder:
the image of Increase.
“This time resembles that of
the marriage of heaven and earth”
|
|
|
you gotta ride it like you find it.
Get your ticket at the station
of the Rock Island Line.
in Rock Island, Illinois
“What it all boiled down to really was everybody giving everybody else a hard time for no good reason whatever… You just couldn’t march to your own music. Nowadays, you couldn’t even hear it… It was lost, the music which each person had inside himself, and which put him in step with things as they should be.”
— The Grifters, Ch. 10, 1963, by
James Myers Thompson
“The Old Man’s still an artist
with a Thompson.”
— Terry in “Miller’s Crossing”
For some of “the music which
each person had inside,”
click on the picture
with the Thompson.
It may be that Kylie is,
in her own way, an artist…
with a 357:
(Hits counter at
The Quality of Diamond
as of 11:05 AM Sept. 2, 2004)
For more on
“the marriage of heaven and earth,”
see
Plato, Pegasus, and the Evening Star.
Symmetry and Change, Part 5…
Whale Road
Hexagram 23
Splitting Apart:
The Image
Mountain
Earth
The mountain rests
on the earth.
“… the plot is different but the monsters, names, and manner of speaking will ring a bell.”
— Frank Pinto, Jr., review of Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf
Other recommended reading, found during a search for the implications of today’s previous entry, “Hexagram 42”:
This excellent meditation
on symmetry and change
comes from a site whose
home page
has the following image:
Symmetry and Change, Part 6…
Cinderella’s Slipper
Hexagram 54
The Marrying Maiden:
The Image
Thunder
Lake
See
“… a Thoreau-like retreat
by a nearby lake….
Both men have
a ‘touch of the poet’….
The symmetry is perfect.”
by a nearby lake….
Both men have
a ‘touch of the poet’….
The symmetry is perfect.”
Symmetry and Change, Part 7…
Another September Morn
Hexagram 56:
The Wanderer
The Image
Fire
Mountain
Fire on the mountain,
Run boys run…
Devil’s in the House of
The Rising Sun!
Friday, September 3, 2004
Symmetry and Change, Part 8…
Hexagram 25
Innocence:
The Image
Heaven
Thunder
Friday, September 3, 2004
Symmetry and Change, Part 9…
Hexagram 49
Revolution:
The Image
the image of Revolution.
“I sit now in a little room off the bar at four-thirty in the morning drinking ochas and then mescal and writing this on some Bella Vista notepaper I filched the other night…. But this is worst of all, to feel your soul dying. I wonder if it is because to-night my soul has really died that I feel at the moment something like peace. Or is it because right through hell there is a path, as Blake well knew, and though I may not take it, sometimes lately in dreams I have been able to see it? …And this is how I sometimes think of myself, as a great explorer who has discovered some extraordinary land from which he can never return to give his knowledge to the world: but the name of this land is hell. It is not Mexico of course but in the heart.”
— Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano
Friday, September 3, 2004
Symmetry and Change, conclusion…
Ite, Missa Est
Hexagram 13
Fellowship With Men:
The Image
Heaven
Fire
“A pretty girl —
is like a melody —- !”
For details, see
A Mass for Lucero.
Comments Off on Sunday September 5, 2004
Friday, September 3, 2004
Friday September 3, 2004
Symmetry and Change, Part 9…
Hexagram 49
Revolution:
The Image
the image of Revolution.
"I sit now in a little room off the bar at four-thirty in the morning drinking ochas and then mescal and writing this on some Bella Vista notepaper I filched the other night…. But this is worst of all, to feel your soul dying. I wonder if it is because to-night my soul has really died that I feel at the moment something like peace. Or is it because right through hell there is a path, as Blake well knew, and though I may not take it, sometimes lately in dreams I have been able to see it? …And this is how I sometimes think of myself, as a great explorer who has discovered some extraordinary land from which he can never return to give his knowledge to the world: but the name of this land is hell. It is not Mexico of course but in the heart."
— Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano
Comments Off on Friday September 3, 2004
Tuesday, August 13, 2002
Tuesday August 13, 2002
As Blake Well Knew
From The New York Times:
Edsger Wybe Dijkstra, whose contributions to the mathematical logic that underlies computer programs and operating systems make him one of the intellectual giants of the field, died on [August 6, 2002] at his home in Nuenen, the Netherlands. He was 72….
Dr. Dijkstra is best known for his shortest-path algorithm, a method for finding the most direct route on a graph or map….
The shortest-path algorithm, which is now widely used in global positioning systems and travel planning, came to him one morning in 1956 as he sat sipping coffee on the terrace of an Amsterdam cafe.
It took him three years to publish the method, which is now known simply as Dijkstra’s algorithm. At the time, he said, algorithms were hardly considered a scientific topic.
From my August 6, 2002, note below:
…right through hell there is a path, as Blake well knew…
— Malcolm Lowry, 1947, Under the Volcano
Comments Off on Tuesday August 13, 2002
Tuesday, August 6, 2002
Tuesday August 6, 2002
In honor of
Pope Callistus III, and
all of whom died on this date:
A lavender love butterfly vignette…
If you remember something there
That glided past you,
Followed close by heavy breathing,
Don't be concerned. It will not harm you;
It's only me, pursuing something
I'm not sure of.
and a
But seriously…
A few words in memory of a great mathematician, André Weil, who died on August 6, 1998:
"I wonder if it is because to-night my soul has really died that I feel at the moment something like peace. Or is it because right through hell there is a path, as Blake well knew, and though I may not take it, sometimes lately in dreams I have been able to see it?"
— Malcolm Lowry, 1947, Under the Volcano
There is a link on the Grand Finale site above to a site on British Columbia, which to Lowry symbolized heaven on earth. See also my website Shining Forth, the title of which is not unrelated to the August 6, 1993 encyclical of Pope John Paul II.
Comments Off on Tuesday August 6, 2002