Log24

Infolded:

“In the garden of Adding,
Live Even and Odd….”
— The Midrash Jazz Quartet in
       City of God , by E. L. Doctorow

Perspectives:

“… and the song of love’s recision is the music of the spheres.”
— E. L. Doctorow, City of God

Doctorow’s remark was quoted here earlier, on February 5, 2009 —

"Each of us has something to offer the Creator...
the bridging of
 masculine and feminine,
 life and death.
It's redemption.... nothing else matters."
-- Martha Cooley in The Archivist (1998)

 Dualities of Pythagoras
 as reconstructed by Aristotle:
  Limited Unlimited
  Odd Even
  Male Female
  Light Dark
  Straight Curved
  ... and so on ....

For Harlan Kane

From this  journal on Feb. 5, 2009:

"In the garden of Adding
live Even and Odd…
And the song of love's recision
is the music of the spheres."

— The Midrash Jazz Quartet in 
City of God , by E. L. Doctorow (2000).

From this  journal on the date of
the above post by Gavaler:

"In the garden of Adding, 
 Live Even and Odd…."

– The Midrash Jazz Quartet
    in the novel City of God
    by E. L. Doctorow (2000)

From a search in this journal
for "Against Dryness":

See also the previous three posts.

Harvard's Barry Mazur likes to quote Aristotle's Metaphysics.  See 1, 2, 3.

Here, with an introductory remark by Martha Cooley, is more from the Metaphysics:

The central aim of Western religion —

"Each of us has something to offer the Creator...
the bridging of
                 masculine and feminine,
                      life and death.
It's redemption.... nothing else matters."
-- Martha Cooley in The Archivist (1998)

The central aim of Western philosophy —

                 Dualities of Pythagoras
              as reconstructed by Aristotle:
                 Limited     Unlimited
                     Odd     Even
                    Male     Female
                   Light     Dark
                Straight     Curved
                  ... and so on ....

"Of these dualities, the first is the most important; all the others may be seen as different aspects of this fundamental dichotomy. To establish a rational and consistent relationship between the limited [man, etc.] and the unlimited [the cosmos, etc.] is… the central aim of all Western philosophy."
— Jamie James in The Music of the Spheres (1993)

"In the garden of Adding,
Live Even and Odd….
And the song of love's recision
is the music of the spheres."
— The Midrash Jazz Quartet in City of God, by E. L. Doctorow (2000)

Harvard University, Department of English:

Today's birthday: Jerry Seinfeld.
Related material:
Is Nothing Sacred? and Symmetries.

City of God

Today's site music is

Nous Voici Dans La Ville.

The central aim of Western religion —

"Each of us has something to offer the Creator... 
the bridging of                  
masculine and feminine,                       
life and death. It's redemption.... 
nothing else matters." 
-- Martha Cooley in The Archivist (1998) 

The central aim of Western philosophy —

                 Dualities of Pythagoras 
                 as reconstructed by Aristotle: 

                 Limited     Unlimited                      
                 Odd         Even           
                 Male        Female                    
                 Light       Dark                 
                 Straight    Curved                   
                 ... and so on .... 

"Of these dualities, the first is the most important; all the others may be seen as different aspects of this fundamental dichotomy. To establish a rational and consistent relationship between the limited [man, etc.] and the unlimited [the cosmos, etc.] is… the central aim of all Western philosophy."
— Jamie James in
   The Music of the Spheres (1993)

"In the garden of Adding,
Live Even and Odd….
And the song of love's recision
is the music of the spheres."
— The Midrash Jazz Quartet in
   City of God, by E. L. Doctorow (2000)

Today is the feast of St. Johann Sebastian Bach.

Doctorow’s Epiphany

E. L. Doctorow is 72 today.

In the Garden of Adding…

The above is a phrase from The Midrash Jazz Quartet in Doctorow’s novel City of God.

Tonight’s site music is “Black Diamond.”

William T. Noon, S.J., Chapter 4 of Joyce and Aquinas, Yale University Press, 1957:

  A related epiphanic question, second only in interest to the question of the nature of epiphany, is how Joyce came by the term. The religious implications would have been obvious to Joyce: no Irish Catholic child could fail to hear of and to understand the name of the liturgical feast celebrated on January 6. But why does Joyce appropriate the term for his literary theory? Oliver St. John Gogarty (the prototype of the Buck Mulligan of Ulysses)… has this to say: “Probably Father Darlington had taught him, as an aside in his Latin class — for Joyce knew no Greek — that ‘Epiphany’ meant ‘a shining forth.'”

From Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining:

Danny Torrance: Is there something bad here?
Dick Hallorann: Well, you know, Doc, when something happens, you can leave a trace of itself behind. Say like, if someone burns toast. Well, maybe things that happen leave other kinds of traces behind. Not things that anyone can notice, but things that people who “shine” can see. Just like they can see things that haven’t happened yet. Well, sometimes they can see things that happened a long time ago. I think a lot of things happened right here in this particular hotel over the years. And not all of ’em was good.

From a website on author Willard Motley:

“Willard Motley’s last published novel is entitled, Let Noon Be Fair, and was actually published post-humously in 1966. The story line takes place in Motley’s adopted country of Mexico, in the fictional fishing village of Las Casas, which was based on Puerta [sic] Vallarta.”

See also “Shining Forth” and yesterday’s entry “Culinary Theology.”