"You don't recover from the events of life, you take them with you, you knit them in, you grow with them and around them; they become who you are; they are life itself; how else my life might have been is unknowable." Charles L. Mee
Above are two submissions to the Post Secret Project, and they remind me that a) relationships between people do not end, they merely change, and b) emotions are rarely genuine and pure. Methinks Paul Simon doth protest too much when he sings, "I have no need of friendship, friendship causes pain", though clearly there are many who appreciate the man who said,
"I wish I had never met you. Because then I could go to sleep at night not knowing there was someone like you out there."
Iceberg Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana. Photo taken by Wadih Ghsoubi. Click on image for larger version.
"Today, to him gazing south with a new-born need stirring in his heart, the clear sky over the mountain's long, low outline seemed to pulsate with promise; today the unseen was everything, the unknown the only real fact of life."
The above quote from The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame, reminds me of my favorite bumper sticker: "There is no secular world." True. True.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." George Bernard Shaw
Image is "Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear" (1889), by Vincent Van Gogh. Click on image for larger version.
The most interesting people, and certainly the best artists, are exceptionally self-reflective, self-critical individuals who are entirely free from the desire to see themselves through the eyes of others. It is a delicate state, but those who achieve it are souls truly liberated from the social confines of their surroundings and open to pursue the strength of their own authenticity. They are not sociopaths, for they often possess a conscience and an empathy and a rigid morality that surpasses their peers. They simply do not allow others to motivate or define them.
"I never write for my listeners. I think about my audience, but I am not writing for them. I have something to tell them, but the audience must also put a certain effort into it. But I never wrote for an audience and never will write for because you have to give the listener something and he has to make an effort in order to understand certain things. The same thing is true of poetry, of paintings, of books. If I were thinking of my audience and one likes this, one likes that, one likes another thing, I would never know what to write."
and this exchange during a 2007 interview attempting to discuss his quartet, "Songs are Sung":
"It’s just notes," says Gorecki dismissively. Does it have a religious or spiritual impulse? "That must remain in my work room," he repeats. Did the third symphony have a message? "Listen," says the composer, "what goes into my music stays in my room. The world can hear what it likes."
It seems that whenever I find a friend or an artist that I admire, a quick look into his or her life reveals a similar character. Will we ever find a politician like this?
While I'm not a big fan of the glossy video interpretation of the movement above, the entire symphony is truly transcendent. Much if not all of his other work is also worth a listen.
Since early April, I have been exercising four to five times a week as part of an effort to lose weight. As my calves allow, that exercise generally takes on the appearance of something like running.
Earlier today, my brother Mark (a great motivator and far more accomplished runner) and I ran a 5k race called the Duck Dash near his home in Cartersville. This was my first athletic race, ever, of any sort, and I'm glad that I did it.
If you'd like to see an interactive report on how the race went, you can check out this link.
One of my favorite photo collections from the 1990s is compiled in a book called, "Earth from Space". This is a set of earth images taken by astronauts with high resolution gear, and it's beautiful to me.
Now there are several online versions of the same idea. The image to the left comes from "Big Blue Marble: Next Generation" (no, not the television show with the great song). Click on the image to see a much nicer view. The website Earth from Space has a decent interface, and many of those images, and more, are also found at Visible Earth.
My brother Mark did a great thing this morning by uploading a very interesting family movie to YouTube. The video is a collection of several films taken in and around Summit, New Jersey, (my grandfather's home town), between approximately 1915 and 1935. The footage was assembled by cousins with talent for such things and distributed at our last reunion in Summit.
This is a fascinating look at one slice of America during that period of our history. It's wonderful to see my great-grandparents in their homes, their eight children at various ages, and my grandfather as a dashing young man shaking hands with his family before taking off from a field in his open cockpit aircraft.
"Homage to the past" (1944), Marc Chagall
"The function of the artist is to provide what life does not." Tom Robbins
Above are two submissions to the Post Secret Project, and they remind me that a) relationships between people do not end, they merely change, and b) emotions are rarely genuine and pure. Methinks Paul Simon doth protest too much when he sings, "I have no need of friendship, friendship causes pain", though clearly there are many who appreciate the man who said,
Iceberg Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana. Photo taken by Wadih Ghsoubi. Click on image for larger version.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." George Bernard Shaw
Since early April, I have been exercising four to five times a week as part of an effort to lose weight. As my calves allow, that exercise generally takes on the appearance of something like running.
One of my favorite photo collections from the 1990s is compiled in a book called, "Earth from Space". This is a set of earth images taken by astronauts with high resolution gear, and it's beautiful to me.
Due to overwhelming support, this posting on the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution has been moved to its own site. Please take a look at:
