Friday, April 25, 2008

Spring Gala

Local Arts Fling at the Malebox, courtesy of Messrs. Weinbaum and Gaither. Tonite @5:00. Readings and Music. Those who have ears to hear. . .

Monday, April 21, 2008

To a Calvinist in Bali

You that are sprung of northern stock,
And nothing lavish, born and bred
With tablets at your foot and head,
And CULPA carven on the rock,

Sense with delight but not with ease
The fragrance of the quinine trees,
The kembang-spatu's lolling flame
With solemn envy kin to shame.

Ah, be content!-The scorpion's tail
Atones for much; without avail
Under the sizzling solar pan
Our sleeping servant pulls the fan.

Even in this island richly blest,
Where beauty walks with naked breast,
Earth is too harsh for Heaven to be
One little hour in jeopardy.

-Edna St. Vincent Millay-

Friday, April 18, 2008

Lady Don't Sew

Lord, let Love dress in garments rich,
But not for sewing care a stitch;
Nor for needles care a pin,
And though she labor, never spin.

-Thomas Banks-

Aphorisms from George Meredith

"A woman who has mastered sauces sits on the apex of civilization."

"We have to guard against 'half-conceptions of wisdom, hysterical goodness, an impatient charity'- against the elementary state of the altruistic virtues. . ."

"A country of compromise goes to pieces at the first cannon shot."

"Much benevolence of the passive order may be traced to a disinclination to inflict pain upon oneself."

"We are connected with the original tendency of men to eat one another, by mounted stages, by linked ties; and at any instant to blink the fact or stop refining on the appetite is dangerous to civilization, as it is to the thrones of rulers when they forget that the world grows from molars."

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Read Evelyn

To anyone who has not so indulged themselves, I strongly recommend the novels of Evelyn Waugh. Waugh wrote novels of aristocratic satire during the prime of the twentieth century, becoming probably the medium's best practitioner, besting even such contemporary talents as P.G. Wodehouse, whom everyone I know seems to prefer for some odd reason. Waugh performs, at his best, the separate tricks of wielding wit's scalpel in one hand while painstakingly fixing the mosaicist's tessellae with the other. His greatest achievement is, of course, "Brideshead Revisited," to which I would add "Decline and Fall" as an essential course and the essay "Well-Informed Circles, and How to Move in Them" as a cherry on top.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Some Bon Mots

"When I am dead, let this of me be said,
His sins were scarlet, but his books were read."
-Hillaire Belloc-

"Tis very strange the mind, that fiery particle,
Should let itself be snuff'd out by an article."
-Byron (on the death of Keats)-

Monday, April 7, 2008

Realized I actually ripped part of what was formerly this post from someone else when I thought the article in question was something I had found. Apologies all round.