Log24

… to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint

— Four Quartets

Intersection sign,
courtesy of Donald Knuth

Related material:

The previous post and Fourfold in this journal.

A Comedy of Manners

Today is Stanford's Baccalaureate.

From Stanford Professor Emeritus Donald E. Knuth—

From The Blues Brothers—

"Inscribe a white diamond…."

President Faust of Harvard on Joan Didion:

"She was referring to life as a kind of improvisation: that magical crossroads of rigor and ease, structure and freedom, reason and intuition. What she calls being prepared to 'go with the change.'"
 

Didion's own words:

"I think about swimming with him into the cave at Portuguese Bend, about the swell of clear water, the way it changed, the swiftness and power it gained as it narrowed through the rocks at the base of the point. The tide had to be just right. We had to be in the water at the very moment the tide was right. We could only have done this a half dozen times at most during the two years we lived there but it is what I remember. Each time we did it I was afraid of missing the swell, hanging back, timing it wrong. John never was. You had to feel the swell change. You had to go with the change. He told me that. No eye is on the sparrow but he did tell me that."

From the same book:

"The craziness is receding but no clarity is taking its place."

— Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

For a magical crossroads at another university, see the five Log24 entries ending on November 25, 2005:

This holy icon
appeared at
N37°25.638'
W122°09.574'
on August 22, 2003,
at the Stanford campus.

Also from that date,
an example of clarity
  in another holy icon —

— in honor of better days
 at Harvard and of a member
of the Radcliffe Class of 1964.

I Paint What I See
[A Ballad of Artistic Integrity]
by E.B. White
The New Yorker, 20 May 1933

"'What do you paint, when you paint on a wall?'
Said John D.'s grandson Nelson.
'Do you paint just anything there at all?
'Will there be any doves, or a tree in fall?
'Or a hunting scene, like an English hall?'

'I paint what I see,' said Rivera.

'What are the colors you use when you paint?'
Said John D.'s grandson Nelson.
'Do you use any red in the beard of a saint?
'If you do, is it terribly red, or faint?
'Do you use any blue? Is it Prussian?'

'I paint what I paint,' said Rivera.

'Whose is that head that I see on the wall?'
Said John D.'s grandson Nelson.
'Is it anyone's head whom we know, at all?
'A Rensselaer, or a Saltonstall?
'Is it Franklin D.? Is it Mordaunt Hall?
Or is it the head of a Russian?

'I paint what I think,' said Rivera.

'I paint what I paint, I paint what I see,
'I paint what I think,' said Rivera,
'And the thing that is dearest in life to me
'In a bourgeois hall is Integrity;
'However . . .
'I'll take out a couple of people drinkin'
'And put in a picture of Abraham Lincoln;
'I could even give you McCormick's reaper
'And still not make my art much cheaper.
'But the head of Lenin has got to stay
'Or my friends will give the bird today,
'The bird, the bird, forever.'

'It's not good taste in a man like me,'
Said John D.'s grandson Nelson,
'To question an artist's integrity
'Or mention a practical thing like a fee,
'But I know what I like to a large degree,
'Though art I hate to hamper;
'For twenty-one thousand conservative bucks
'You painted a radical. I say shucks,
'I never could rent the offices—–
'The capitalistic offices.
'For this, as you know, is a public hall
'And people want doves, or a tree in fall
'And though your art I dislike to hamper,
'I owe a little to God and Gramper,
'And after all,
'It's my wall . . .'

'We'll see if it is,' said Rivera.

Related material:

Pictures of the Rockefeller Center mural,
"Man at the Crossroads," and
Rivera's re-creation of the mural,
"Man, Controller of the Universe."

See also another treatment of the "Man at the Crossroads" theme–

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]…."
 

In Hoc Signo

Sources:

Hellblazer: Highwater,
from a graphic-novel
series that is the source
of Keanu Reeves's latest
spiritual adventure —

Another source…
The home page of Donald E. Knuth.

.

"When there's nothing to believe in
Still you're coming back,
you're running back
You're coming back for more

  So put me on a highway…."
— The Eagles, 1975