another day trip again

today i bring J2 and her partner to the museum of american art and fortuitously discover the martin luther king library in the next street. besides used book stores, my favorite hangout has to be a well-stocked library. this is my third trip downtown in three weeks. wow.

wordcraft

come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill

- yeats, fr. into the twilight (1899)

夕   陽     山      外    山

on the hill behind the hill the sun sets

- 李叔同 li shutong, fr. the farewell song (1910's)

bewitching words however you look at them. the imagery is at once as extravagantly lyrical as the irishman gets (go read his entire poem) and as beautifully spare as the rest of the chinese monk's verse.

monochrome

i've got it. the trouble is that the carotenoids have a monopoly on the pigments in our backyard. what we need is a dash of thiocyanins, so that we can look more like this. also, a lakeside location wouldn't hurt.

the wisdom of repugnance

revulsion is not an argument... in crucial cases, however, repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason’s power fully to articulate it... shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder. 
-  leon kass (2000, writing about human cloning)

there is a place, then, for a tiny garret tucked under the eaves of my house within which reposes the forgotten spinning wheel with its inconvenient needle. it is good that voices that are popular acceptable and established may sometimes come up against an awkward unremembered qualm. i hope then that i will shudder, and question.

droolworthy

i spend my morning enjoying the view around my friend's home. now J1 wants us to move there too.

new word

dirigisme  [diːriːˈʒiːzəm] n. (government, politics & diplomacy) control by the state of economic and social matters [fr. french]. dirigiste adj.

i don't know about you, but this strikes me as a rather efficient and elegant word for all the stuff back east. the odd thing is that i cannot recall ever coming across this word in all my years living in two dirigiste societies. i have to move to a bastion of free-market capitalism to learn it. hey people, we ought to say, we own the whole concept.

at the pet shop

a basket of colorful tennis balls sits at checkout. donate a tennis ball to a homeless dog today! urges the sign.

i envision a troop of earnest volunteers swarming onto street corners and into back alleys to disburse donated balls to homeless bored wandering canines. 

would you like to donate a ball to a homeless dog, the cashier asks with an utterly straight face. not today, thanks.

wow

this is one gorgeous fall day with the sun and the wind out in equal measure so that you just want to take a deep deep breath and do a pirouette or two.

想起難捨 lord jesus, when i think of thee

no voice can tell no song describe the fullness of your grace 

no sin can bind no guilt remind, that your love cannot erase

this is an old hymn of unknown provenance and age translated from another language. the childlike words hit me unawares. it is good for the soul to remember the simple argument of the cross which confounds my most jaded sophistication. wash me, and i shall be whiter than snow. - ps 51:7  at the heart of it all my need is so modest and God's provision is so fitting.

thou art the lily of the valley, the bright and morning star

where's george?

J2 finds this marked bill.

in this case it appears that george has traveled 18 miles eastward in 22 days, making that 0.76 miles a day. a tad tardy, wouldn't you say?