A death last Sunday —
Meanwhile . . .
Amy Adams attends the 2019 Vanity Fair Oscar Party
at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on
Sunday, February 24, 2019, in Beverly Hills, California.
Saturday, March 2, 2019
Fashion Story
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Monday, August 13, 2012
Something Between
"I am a skeptic to whom the idea that a benign God
created us and watches over us is something between
a fairy story and a bad joke."
— The late art critic Robert Hughes in Things I Didn't Know*
A followup to this afternoon's previous Amy Adams post—
"Here was finality indeed, and cleavage!"
* Vintage paperback, December 2007, page 7
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Tuesday, November 19, 2024
Skin in the Game: Real or Fake?
"Here was finality indeed, and cleavage!"
— Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano
Update of 1:28 PM ET on November 19, 2024 —
"The decadent legacy of Berlin between the World Wars,
and that of the American speak-easy era, have left their marks
on fashion, of course. At the Golden Globes on Sunday night,
Nicole Kidman incarnated the steamy eroticism of the Weimar
years in a clingy 20's-style gold-spangled dress by Tom Ford for
YSL Rive Gauche. Ms. Kidman's illusion top, with its suggestion
of nudity, set tongues wagging well into the next day."
— By Ruth La Ferla, The New York Times, Jan. 27, 2004
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Sunday, October 8, 2023
Einführung
Metaphysics for the damned —
|
From the 1979 film "A Little Romance" —
Reading something you It's just a book. I used to read those too. What is it?
An Introduction to Metaphysics,
School has changed I'm just reading it for fun.
Fun?
Most people think anyone
I don't. But I have to admit
Heidegger.
Heidegger isn't all that hard.
Like, "Why is there something |
… And for the not so damned —
The Source —
https://www.bard.edu/library/arendt/pdfs/
Heidegger-EinfuhrungMetaphysik.pdf
The actress playing the teen reading Heidegger in the 1979 film
"A Little Romance" was Diane Lane. The film was set in Venice.
Later in Venice . . .
Ben Affleck and Diane Lane at the 2006 Venice Film Festival
premiere of "Hollywoodland" :
An antidote to Hollywoodland . . .
The classic novel Under the Volcano :
"Here was finality indeed, and cleavage!"
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Tuesday, December 22, 2015
Boulevard of Broken Punchlines
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Tuesday, May 5, 2015
Harvard Cinco de Mayo
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Sunday, January 6, 2013
True Fury
For the Feast of Epiphany:
A trip back to December 1955—
Meditations for Three Kings Day (Feast of Epiphany)—
"Show me all the blueprints." — Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes
"The Tesseract is where it belongs: out of our reach." — Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury
"Here was finality indeed, and cleavage!" — Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano (1947)
Click images for some background.
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Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Star Quality
A search in memory of Gerry Rafferty,
a talented singer-songwriter who died today at 63.
"Here was finality indeed, and cleavage!"
— Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano
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Thursday, September 30, 2010
Cleft
"Here was finality indeed, and cleavage!"
— Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano
Related— Rosetta Stone, today's Google Doodle, and Rock of Ages.
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Thursday, October 11, 2007
Thursday October 11, 2007
The Nobel Prize
in Literature
Background from 1947:
in Literature
this year goes to the author
of The Golden Notebook
and The Cleft.
Related material:
The Golden Obituary
and Cleavage —
Log24, Oct. 9, 2007 —
Background from 1947:
Further details:
Wheel
Quoted by physics writer
Heinz Pagels at the end of
The Cosmic Code:
“For the essence and the end
Of his labor is beauty… one beauty,
the rhythm of that Wheel….”
— Robinson Jeffers
|
“The Ferris wheel came into view again, just the top, silently burning high on the hill, almost directly in front of him, then the trees rose up over it. The road, which was terrible and full of potholes, went steeply downhill here; he was approaching the little bridge over the barranca, the deep ravine. Halfway across the bridge he stopped; he lit a new cigarette from the one he’d been smoking, and leaned over the parapet, looking down. It was too dark to see the bottom, but: here was finality indeed, and cleavage! Quauhnahuac was like the times in this respect, wherever you turned the abyss was waiting for you round the corner. Dormitory for vultures and city of Moloch! When Christ was being crucified, so ran the sea-borne, hieratic legend, the earth had opened all through this country…” — Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano, 1947. (Harper & Row reissue, 1984, p. 15) Comment by Stephen Spender: “There is a suggestion of Christ descending into the abyss for the harrowing of Hell. But it is the Consul whom we think of here, rather than of Christ. The Consul is hurled into this abyss at the end of the novel.” — Introduction to Under the Volcano Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter XXI — Gibbon, discussing the theology of the Trinity, defines perichoresis as “… the internal connection and spiritual penetration which indissolubly unites the divine persons59 ….
William Golding: “Simon’s head was tilted slightly up. His eyes could not break away and the Lord of the Flies hung in space before him. ‘What are you doing out here all alone? Aren’t you afraid of me?’ Simon shook. ‘There isn’t anyone to help you. Only me. And I’m the Beast.’ Simon’s mouth labored, brought forth audible words. ‘Pig’s head on a stick.’ ‘Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!’ said the head. For a moment or two the forest and all the other dimly appreciated places echoed with the parody of laughter. ‘You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close!’ “ “Thought of the day: — Alice Woodrome, Good Friday, 2004 Anne Francis,
“Here was finality indeed, — Under the Volcano |
For further details of
the wheel metaphor, see
Rock of Ages
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Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Wednesday November 22, 2006
Rock of Ages
“Who knows where madness lies?”
— Rhetorical question
in “Man of La Mancha”
(See previous entry.)
Using madness to
seek out madness, let us
consult today’s numbers…
Pennsylvania Lottery
Nov. 22, 2006:
Mid-day 487
Evening 814
The number 487 leads us to
page 487 in the
May 1977 PMLA,
“The Form of Carnival
in Under the Volcano“:
“The printing presses’ flywheel
marks the whirl of time*
that will split La Despedida….”
From Dana Grove,
A Rhetorical Analysis of
Under the Volcano,
page 92:
“… In this way, mystical as well as psychological dimensions are established. Later on, the two pass by a printer’s shop window and curiously stop to inspect, amidst wedding portraits and well in front of the revolving flywheel of the printing machines, ‘a photographic enlargement purporting to show the disintegration of a glacial deposit in the Sierra Madre, of a great rock split by forest fires.’ Significantly the picture is called ‘La Despedida,’ the Parting. Yvonne cannot help but see the symbolic significance of the photograph and wishes with all of her might ‘to heal the cleft rock’ just as she wishes to heal the divorce….”
Some method in this madness
is revealed by the evening
lottery number, 814, which
leads to an entry of 8/14:
is revealed by the evening
lottery number, 814, which
leads to an entry of 8/14:
“… a point of common understanding
between the classic and romantic worlds.
Quality, the cleavage term between
hip and square, seemed to be it.”
— Robert M. Pirsig
Rebecca Goldstein
The 8/14 entry also deals with
Rebecca Goldstein, who
seems to understand
such cleavage
very well.
(See also today’s previous entry.)
* Cf. Shakespeare’s “whirligig of time“
linked to in the previous entry.)
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Saturday, August 19, 2006
Saturday August 19, 2006
For Jill St. John
On Her Birthday:
Cleavage Term
Revisited
On Her Birthday:
Cleavage Term
Revisited
“… a point of common understanding between the classic and romantic worlds. Quality, the cleavage term between hip and square, seemed to be it.”
“During his distinguished 17-year tenure as director of the theatre program at Fordham University, Sacharow was recalled by faculty colleagues as ‘exceedingly collegial, understanding, sympathetic and very, very funny.'”
— Obituary of Lawrence J. Sacharow at Fordham University, a Jesuit institution
“Here was finality indeed,
and cleavage!”
— Under the Volcano
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Saturday, April 10, 2004
Saturday April 10, 2004
Harrowing
"The Ferris wheel came into view again, just the top, silently burning high on the hill, almost directly in front of him, then the trees rose up over it. The road, which was terrible and full of potholes, went steeply downhill here; he was approaching the little bridge over the barranca, the deep ravine. Halfway across the bridge he stopped; he lit a new cigarette from the one he'd been smoking, and leaned over the parapet, looking down. It was too dark to see the bottom, but: here was finality indeed, and cleavage! Quauhnahuac was like the times in this respect, wherever you turned the abyss was waiting for you round the corner. Dormitory for vultures and city of Moloch! When Christ was being crucified, so ran the sea-borne, hieratic legend, the earth had opened all through this country …"
— Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano, 1947. (Harper & Row reissue, 1984, p. 15)
Comment by Stephen Spender:
"There is a suggestion of Christ descending into the abyss for the harrowing of Hell. But it is the Consul whom we think of here, rather than of Christ. The Consul is hurled into this abyss at the end of the novel."
— Introduction to Under the Volcano
Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter XXI —
Gibbon, discussing the theology of the Trinity, defines perichoresis as
"… the internal connection and spiritual penetration which indissolubly unites the divine persons59 ….
59 … The
or 'circumincessio,' is perhaps the deepest and darkest corner of the whole theological abyss."
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you."
William Golding:
"Simon's head was tilted slightly up. His eyes could not break away and the Lord of the Flies hung in space before him.
'What are you doing out here all alone? Aren't you afraid of me?'
Simon shook.
'There isn't anyone to help you. Only me. And I'm the Beast.'
Simon's mouth labored, brought forth audible words.
'Pig's head on a stick.'
'Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!' said the head. For a moment or two the forest and all the other dimly appreciated places echoed with the parody of laughter. 'You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you? Close, close, close!' "
"Thought of the day:
You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar… if you're into catchin' flies."
— Alice Woodrome, Good Friday, 2004
Anne Francis,
also known as
Honey West:
"Here was finality indeed,
and cleavage!"
— Under the Volcano
From the official
Anne Francis Web Site:
Come into my parlor….
For some background,
see the use of the word
"spider" in Under the Volcano:
WRIDER/ESPIDER:
THE CONSUL AS ARTIST IN
UNDER THE VOLCANO,
by Patrick A. McCarthy.
See, too, Why Me?