December 2011
7 posts
The Cause of Religion
Most people are not looking for provable truths. As you said, truth is often accompanied by intense pain, and almost no one is looking for painful truths. What people need is beautiful, comforting stories that make them feel as if their lives have some meaning. Which is where religion comes from.
(From Murakami’s 1Q84 - page 441 - which I am steadily making my way through. This is not a...
Continuing the Case for Hugo Williams
Opinion was divided as to whether she had left me, and I didn’t know for sure myself, as we don’t discuss such things. The evidence seemed to be that she had, given that she no longer lived here, but we continued to visit. People said jokingly that I had the ideal marriage, but in reality such division of life plans was difficult to think about positively, and the travelling was...
Read More Poetry
Tides
The evening advances, then withdraws again Leaving our cups and books like islands on the floor. We are drifting, you and I, As far from another as the young heroes Of these two novels we have just laid down. For that is happiness: to wander alone Surrounded by the same moon, whose tides remind us of ourselves, Our distances, and what we leave behind. The lamp left on, the curtains...
Hitchens Dead
“Writing is what’s important to me, and anything that helps me do that — or enhances and prolongs and deepens and sometimes intensifies argument and conversation — is worth it to me,” he told Charlie Rose in a television interview in 2010, adding that it was “impossible for me to imagine having my life without going to those parties, without having those late nights, without that second...
Death is Good For Some
Death has this much to be said for it:
You don’t have to get out of bed for it.
Wherever you happen to be
They bring it to you free.
(Kingsley Amis as quoted in the recent issue of Vanity Fair dated January 2012.)
People Don't Make Sense Anymore
People just don’t make sense anymore. You’ll save yourself a lot of trouble if you internalize this. Observe it, deconstruct it, and appreciate just how ridiculous most business conversation has become.
(This is from an online Harvard Business Review article posted Monday called I don’t Understand What Anyone is Saying Anymore about the silliness of business conversation...
Paradigms Lost
Most of us - almost all - must take in and give out language as we breath, and we had better consider the seriousness of language pollution as second only to air pollution. For the linguistically disciplined, to misuse or mispronounce a word is an unnecessary and unhealthy contribution to the surrounding smog. To have taught ourselves not to do this, or - being human and thus also imperfect - to...