The New York Times on an artist who reportedly died yesterday —
The background wall art below is not unlike Marden's Moss Sutra …
Some will prefer the fore ground of the above image,
which is closely related to the art term "line of beauty."
The following page from the Sept. 16, 2013, issue of The New Yorker
deals with current trends in paranoid schizophrenia. It may interest
fans of Philip K. Dick.
(Click for a larger, clearer image.)
As for the poem by Stanley Moss on the above page (35, by the way),
a quote from Wallace Stevens seems appropriate —
"It was a language he spoke, because he must, yet did not know.
It was a page he had found in the handbook of heartbreak."
For the "wall" theme of Moss, see (for instance), this journal
on June 3, 2013 — New Yorker Art.
"All in all…." — Pink Floyd
Yesterday's post Grundlagen —
Midrash on yesterday's Grundlagen —
A poem linked to here on the above "building blocks" date, in the
Log24 post Sermon of 11 AM ET Sunday, 15 September 2013 —
Moss on the Wall (Continued)
Tom Cruise at the Vatican in Mission: Impossible III (2006) —
Starring Tom Cruise as Ezekiel Moss, "a mysterious drifter
with the divine ability to channel and physically inhabit
the spirits of the dead."
— The quote is from "Philip Seymour Hoffman
Project 'Ezekiel Moss' Will Not Be Sold In Berlin*"
at Deadline.com.
See also Hereafter + Damon in this journal, as well as
the upload date for the above clip: Oct. 6, 2011.
* Here "Berlin" refers to the upcoming
European Film Market, Feb. 6-14
"By a knight of ghosts and shadows . . . ."
The "Lindenhurst" on the above map suggests an Irrelevant
geographic history note, and a scholium . . .
A Wroclaw image from 2011 in which a version of my own work appears —
Ekphrasis of the Cullinane-Lyche wall above . . .
|
From The Golden Key by George MacDonald "We must find the country from which the shadows come," said Mossy. "We must, dear Mossy," responded Tangle. "What if your golden key should be the key to it?" "Ah! that would be grand," returned Mossy. |
“… I’m reverting to the foundational securities of childhood . . . .”
— University Diaries weblog this morning
Among my foundational securities is an image that might be titled . . .
The Truman Show —
Related literary remarks — Moss on the Wall.
Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times —
"The detective story genre concerns the finding of clues
and the search for hidden designs, and its very form
underscores Mr. Pynchon’s obsession with conspiracies
and the existence of systems too complicated to understand."
— Review of Pynchon's Bleeding Edge , Sept. 10, 2013
Background: "Moss on the Wall," this journal on that date.
A less complicated system —
"Plan 9 deals with the resurrection of the dead."
— Bill Murray in "Ed Wood"
(The plan , as well as the elevation ,
of the above structure is a 3×3 grid.)
See also a related brick wall.
Some context: Small World (July 12, 2004)
and Moss on the Wall (Sept. 10, 2013).
(Where Entertainment Is God, continued)
Related material: A Log24 post from the release date,
September 10, 2013, for the DVD of "Delete"—
The Blue Buildings
in the Summer Air
by Wallace Stevens
(Collected Poems, pp. 216-217)
I.
Cotton Mather died when I was a boy. The books
He read, all day, all night and all the nights,
Had got him nowhere. There was always the doubt,
That made him preach the louder, long for a church
In which his voice would roll its cadences,
After the sermon, to quiet that mouse in the wall.
II.
Over wooden Boston, the sparkling Byzantine
Was everything that Cotton Mather was
And more. Yet the eminent thunder from the mouse,
The grinding in the arches of the church,
The plaster dropping, even dripping, down,
The mouse, the moss, the woman on the shore…
III.
If the mouse should swallow the steeple, in its
time…
It was a theologian’s needle, much
Too sharp for that. The shore, the sea, the sun,
Their brilliance through the lattices, crippled
The chandeliers, their morning glazes spread
In opal blobs along the walls and floor.
IV.
Look down now, Cotton Mather, from the blank.
Was heaven where you thought? It must be there.
It must be where you think it is, in the light
On bed-clothes, in an apple on a plate.
It is the honey-comb of the seeing man.
It is the leaf the bird brings back to the boat.
V.
Go, mouse, go nibble at Lenin in his tomb.
Are you not le plus pur, you ancient one?
Cut summer down to find the honey-comb.
You are one… Go hunt for honey in his hair.
You are one of the not-numberable mice
Searching all day, all night, for the honey-comb.
Evil
Some academics may feel that a denunciation of an essay by one of their fellow academics as "evil" (see this morning's entry The Last Word) goes too far.
Here is a followup to that entry.
From the Riviera Presbyterian Church, a sermon quoting Madeleine L’Engle's classic A Wrinkle in Time:
|
For a moment there was the darkness of space, then another planet. The outlines of this planet were not clean and clear. It seemed to be covered with a smoky haze. Through the haze Meg thought she could make out the familiar outlines of continents like pictures in her Social Studies books. "Is it because of our atmosphere that we can't see properly?" she asked anxiously. "No, Meg, yyou know thattt itt iss nnott tthee attmosspheeere," Mrs. Which said. "Yyou mmusstt bee brrave." "It's the Thing!" Charles Wallace cried. "It's the Dark Thing we saw… when we were riding on Mrs. Whatsit's back!" "Did it just come?" Meg asked in agony, unable to take her eyes from the sickness of the shadow which darkened the beauty of the earth. Mrs. Whatsit sighed. "No, Meg. It hasn't just come. It has been there for a great many years. That is why your planet is such a troubled one." "I hate it!" Charles Wallace cried passionately. "I hate the Dark Thing!" Mrs. Whatsit nodded. "Yes, Charles dear. We all do." "But what is it?" Calvin demanded. "We know that it's evil, but what is it?" "Yyouu hhave ssaidd itt!" Mrs. Which's voice rang out. "Itt iss Eevill. Itt iss thee Ppowers of Ddarrkknessss!" "But what's going to happen?" Meg's voice trembled. "Oh, please, Mrs. Which, tell us what's going to happen!" "We will continue tto ffight!" Something in Mrs. Which's voice made all three of the children stand straighter, throwing back their shoulders with determination, looking at the glimmer that was Mrs. Which with pride and confidence. "And we're not alone, you know, children," came Mrs. Whatsit, the comforter. "All through the universe it's being fought, all through the cosmos… and some of our very best fighters have come right from your own planet, and it's a little planet, dears, out on the edge of a little galaxy." "Who have some of our fighters been?" Calvin asked. "Oh, you must know them dear," Mrs. Whatsit said. Mrs. Who's spectacles shone out at them triumphantly, "And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not." "Jesus!" Charles Wallace said. "Why, of course, Jesus!" "Go on, Charles, love. There were others. All your great artists. They've been lights for us to see by." "Leonardo da Vinci?" Calvin suggested tentatively. "And Michelangelo?" "And Shakespeare," Charles Wallace called out, "and Bach! And Pasteur and Madame Curie and Einstein!" Now Calvin's voice rang with confidence. "And Schweitzer and Gandhi and Buddha and Beethoven and Rembrandt and St. Francis!" "Watch!" the Medium told them. The earth with its fearful covering of dark shadow swam out of view and they moved rapidly through the Milky Way. And there was the Thing again. Suddenly there was a great burst of light through the Darkness. The light spread out and where it touched the Darkness the Darkness disappeared. The light spread until the patch of Dark Thing had vanished, and there was only a gentle shining, and through the shining came the stars, clear and pure. No shadows. No fear. Only the stars and the clear darkness of space, quite different from the fearful darkness of the Thing. "You see!" the Medium cried, smiling happily. "It can be overcome! It is being overcome all the time!" And it is. Lift up your hearts, lift up your heads, catch the ball, practice Advent, see in the dark. You are a city set on a hill, whose light cannot be hid. said Jesus, and he believed it. |
Hell to Heaven
From Hotel Point:
On a novel, Dow Mossman's
The Stones of Summer —
Evidence of Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano. The Dow Mossman character (Dawes Williams) sitting in the Rio Grande tearing pages out of his notebooks. (We get the pages, reproduced somewhat tediously in near-agate type.) Somewhere the ex-Consul Geoffrey Firmin gets mention. Mythic drinking and death in Mexico, vaguely “Jungian.”…
“The first time he had noticed it, language, was in the fourth grade when Miss Norma Jean Thompson, his teacher, turned against the whole class and said:
‘All Americans eventually go to heaven.’
‘By sweet Jesus,’ Ronnie Crown had said that afternoon, sitting on Dunchee’s wall, waiting for Dawes Williams to come tell him about it, ‘that’s about the God Damn dumbest thing I ever heard.’
Dawes Williams had agreed immediately that the message was insipid, but he thought for years that the syntax was inspired. In fact, the first time Norma Jean Thompson had said, ALL AMERICANS EVENTUALLY GO TO HEAVEN, was also the first time Dawes Williams had ever noticed the English sentence."
From Norma Jean Thompson:
"… the Town House Restaurant on Central and Morningside [in Albuquerque]: 'It's like going backwards in time to the late 1950s; you'd think you'd meet Frank Sinatra in there. You can drown in the big red leather booths, and if you're lucky, they'll take out their private family stock of brandy. Wonderful Greek salads, steaks and potatoes for lunch or dinner. Time stops in there, right off Route 66.' "
From wcities.com:
On the Town House Lounge & Restaurant in Albuquerque:
"Try the three-inch Baklava and feel like you have died and gone to heaven…"
AMEN.
See, too, the film "Stone Reader"
and the previous Log24 entry.
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