Log24

Sunday, November 2, 2014

Right Through Hell

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:28 am

… there is a path. — Malcolm Lowry

Monday, February 26, 2024

Once Upon a Time, Eureka

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:02 pm

"Right through hell there is a path" — Under the Volcano

Some Context:

Monday, December 11, 2023

Programming for Language Animals*

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:29 pm

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
confused with the much newer Styx operating system

"Right through hell there is a path . . . ."

— Malcolm Lowry

From zdnet.com two days earlier —

Linus Torvalds on the state of Linux today
and how AI figures in its future

" Looking ahead, Hohndel said, we must talk about
'artificial intelligence large language models (LLM).
I typically say artificial intelligence is autocorrect on steroids.
Because all a large language model does is it predicts what's
the most likely next word….' "

Torvalds — "We actually need autocorrects on steroids.
I see AI as a tool that can help us be better at what we do."

— zdnet.com, Dec. 5, 2023 at 2:13 p.m. PT

Midrash —

* A phrase of George Steiner.

Thursday, December 7, 2023

Craft

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:39 pm

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

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

For Child Buyers

Filed under: General — m759 @ 5:25 am

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

Hotel Bella Vista, Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico

— 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.

Monday, November 30, 2020

Space Exploration

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 2:52 pm

http://www.log24.com/log/pix18/180810-Huston-chessboard-post-100710.jpg

A sequel suggested by Jaime King’s Instagram yesterday

IMAGE- 'Right through hell there is a path.'

And they swam and they swam all over the dam.

Sunday, November 25, 2018

At Eternity’s Gate

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:42 pm

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

Tuesday, June 26, 2018

Flores

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:20 am

"Reverend, Reverend,
Is this some conspiracy?"

Pantera

IMAGE- 'Right through hell there is a path.'

Click George for a meditation on Albee.

Sunday, December 10, 2017

Interlacing, Interweaving

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:00 pm

The above title should be sung to the following tune

"Right through hell
 there is a path…."
 — Malcolm Lowry,
Under the Volcano

Friday, February 26, 2016

Overarching

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 4:00 pm

(Continued)

"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

Friday, February 12, 2016

The Game

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 8:14 pm

"Right through hell
 there is a path…."
 — Malcolm Lowry,
Under the Volcano

Saturday, July 25, 2015

Strange Loop

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 10:00 pm

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 —

Wikipedia —

"On February 19, 2015, IFTTT renamed
their original application to IF…."

This journal —

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 

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

“Ragtime” Author Dies at 84

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:55 pm

“…right through hell
     there is a path…”
 
  — Malcolm Lowry

Monday, April 4, 2011

Getting There

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:45 am

"Get there fast. Get there first."

— Motto in New York Times  ad (obituaries section).

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110404-NYTobitsAd.jpg

 

"Right through hell
 there is a path."
Under the Volcano ,
quoted here on the day
a religious historian died.

 

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110404-NYTobitsSm.jpg

Friday, March 25, 2011

Combinatorial Delight

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

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."

Monday, August 2, 2010

Specific and Robust

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:02 am

The New York Times  version of the philosophers' stone:

IMAGE-- The Philosophers' Stone, according to The New York Times-- Intro to a column by Prof. Gary Gutting of Notre Dame

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….”

Foucault’s Pendulum )

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.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Sunday June 28, 2009

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:28 am
  Hell Path

“…right through hell
     there is a path…”
 
  — Malcolm Lowry
 

From 'Ragtime'-- 'He couldn't tell her how to look at a diamond....'

Related material:
 
This morning’s
   New York Times obituaries…

New York Times obituaries: Diamond cutter Antonio Bianco, with ads for Ford Motors

…and The Restaurant Quarré in Berlin,
   with a view of the Brandenburg Gate:

Berlin restaurant with view of Brandenburg Gate

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Wednesday June 17, 2009

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 4:30 am

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

Hotel Bella Vista, Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico

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.

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Thursday October 9, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:26 am

First Draft
of History

(Click to enlarge)
 
NY Times online 2:18 AM Thursday, Oct. 9, 2008

Deep Background:

From the Terrace
of the Hotel Bella Vista
in Cuernavaca

From the Terrace (of the Hotel Bella Vista, 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)

The Peacock Throne

Saturday, August 5, 2006

Saturday August 5, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:00 pm

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.

IMAGE- 'Right through hell there is a path.'

"IMAGE-

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060805-Evite.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

“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

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060516-Kunitz2.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Sunday, September 5, 2004

Sunday September 5, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:00 pm

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

Sep 03 2004
12:00:54 AM

Cinderella’s
Slipper
 
Sep 03 2004
10:01:56 AM
Another
September Morn

 

Sep 03 2004
12:00:25 PM

Noon

Sep 03 2004
01:13:49 PM

De Nada

Sep 03 2004
03:17:13 
PM

Ite, Missa Est 


Tuesday, August 31, 2004

Symmetry and Change, Part 1…

Early Evening,
Shining Star

7:31:01 PM ET

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…

Under the Volcano,
Chapter VI:

“What have I got out of my life? Contacts with famous men… The occasion Einstein asked me the time, for instance. That summer evening…. smiles when I say I don’t know. And yet asked me. Yes: the great Jew, who has upset the whole world’s notions of time and space, once leaned down… to ask me… ragged freshman… at the first approach of the evening star, the time. And smiled again when I pointed out the clock neither of us had noticed.”

For the thoughts on time
of another famous man,
from Mexico, see the
Nobel Prize acceptance speech
of Octavio Paz,
In Search of the Present.”


Wednesday, September 1, 2004

Symmetry and Change, Part 2…

Words and Images

9:00:35 AM ET

Hexagram 35
Progress:

The Image

Fire

Earth

The sun rises over the earth.

From Aug. 18, 2004:

“Oh, my Lolita. I have only words
to play with!” (Nabokov, Lolita)

“This is the best toy train set
a boy ever had!”
(Orson Welles, after first touring
RKO Studios, quoted in Halliwell)

“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.”

Donald F. Larsson

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:

Bill’s Diamond Theory

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 book — ‘It’s called The Little Engine That Could Because It Could.'”

“Puff, puff, woo, woo, off we go!” 

 


 

Wednesday, September 1, 2004

Symmetry and Change, Part 3…

Whale Rider

12:07:28 PM

Hexagram 28
Preponderance of
the Great:

The Image

Lake

Wind

The lake rises
above
the trees.

 

Cullinane College News:

“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) 


Thursday, September 2, 2004

Symmetry and Change, Part 4…

Heaven and Earth

11:11:42 AM ET

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”


Kylie


Finney

Well if you want to ride
you gotta ride it like you find it.
Get your ticket at the station
of the Rock Island Line.
Lonnie Donegan (d. Nov. 3)
and others
The Rock Island Line’s namesake depot 
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


Thursday, September 2, 2004

Symmetry and Change, Part 5…

Whale Road

7:00:23 PM

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”:

Water Wings.

This excellent meditation
on symmetry and change
comes from a site whose
home page
has the following image:


Friday, September 3, 2004

 Symmetry and Change, Part 6…

Cinderella’s Slipper

12:00:54 AM ET

Hexagram 54
The Marrying Maiden:

 

The Image

Thunder


Lake
See
The hundredletter
thunderwords of
Finnegans Wake


“… a Thoreau-like retreat
by a nearby lake….
Both men have
a ‘touch of the poet’….
The symmetry is perfect.”

Friday, September 3, 2004  

Symmetry and Change, Part 7…

Another September Morn

10:01:56 AM ET

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…

Noon

12:00:25 PM ET

Hexagram 25
Innocence:

The Image

Heaven


Thunder

Under heaven
thunder rolls.
 


Friday, September 3, 2004

Symmetry and Change, Part 9…

De Nada

Helen Lane

1:13:49 PM ET

Hexagram 49
Revolution:

The Image

Lake


Fire
 Fire in the lake:
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

3:17:13 PM ET

Hexagram 13
Fellowship With Men:

The Image

Heaven


Fire

Heaven together with fire.

“A pretty girl —
is like a melody —- !”

 For details, see
A Mass for Lucero


Friday, September 3, 2004

Friday September 3, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:13 pm

Symmetry and Change, Part 9…

De Nada

Helen Lane

1:13:49 PM ET

Hexagram 49
Revolution:

The Image

Lake



Fire

 

 Fire in the lake:
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

Tuesday, August 13, 2002

Tuesday August 13, 2002

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:37 pm

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

Tuesday, August 6, 2002

Tuesday August 6, 2002

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:23 pm

In honor of

Pope St. Sixtus II,

Pope St. Hormisdas,

Pope Callistus III, and

Pope Paul VI,

all of whom died on this date:

Bouncing butterflies

A music box butterfly tune

A lavender love butterfly vignette

Bob Lind himself sings

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

Grand Finale!

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.

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