Movie Recommendation

"Atonement" was good, if you're willing to forgive it its last five minutes.

They Don't Even Know

If you see an Irishman today, make sure to point out to him that Saint Patrick was actually English.

Some Mixed Wisdom from "Le Comedie Humaine"

"The duration of a passion is proportionate with the original resistance of the woman."

"First love is a kind of vaccination which saves a man from catching the complaint a second time."

"Behind every fortune there is a crime."

"No man should marry before he has studied anatomy and dissected the body of a woman."

"Everything is bilateral in the domain of thought. Ideas are binary. Janus is the myth of criticism as well as genius. Only God is triangular."

-Honore de Balzac-

Three Epitaphs

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife.
Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art:
I warm'd both hands before the fire of life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.

-W.S. Landor-

Cast a cold eye
On life, on death:
Horseman, pass by!

-W.B. Yeats-

Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie:
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

-R.L. Stevenson-

The Birth of Cool

To attempt any comprehensive definition of Coolness is much like trying to gather sunlight in a sieve, and even less likely to shower any reflective credit on the person that attempts it. Even success in this effort makes us at most secretaries to unmindful savants; we make a science of their unconcious gestures and unstrategized charisma, all so that we may seperate the chimeras from the substance of their perfect magnetism.



A friend and I created what I believe was the formal Science of the Cool a few years ago. We arrived at a useful Trinity of Criteria out of which Coolness was variously constituted; namely, talent, the subject's level of awareness of the former, and the level of value at which society estimated the same. We employed our method of evaluation to the satisfaction of our curiosity. In retrospect though, I feel as if a more fruitful inquiry would have begun with the question, "Whence does Coolness originate?" Certainly the Greeks cannot claim the honor of paternity. Each of their foremost heroes, seizing after whatever desire for excellence most consumes him, never quite covers himself in this one. Achilles sees his end, and invites it valiantly, never pausing to allow himself to look to anything other than the consumation of his own arete. He is not cool simply because he is too purposeful, and even when Agamemnon deprives him of his purpose, his spirit and his nerves are drawn too tensely for him to look for any other fascination; he doesn't fall casually in love or take up a thoughtless hobby; probably the moment in which he stands closest to entering the Sanctum of Coolness comes in his initial meeting of the embassage, and his monologue of self justification quickly closes the door to him. Achilles is not Cool, and there is no blaming him for it. He sees the close of his horizons, and no other vista lies open to him. He does not meet the end in stoic morbidity, but with a strange, closed jawed extravagance, an exagerated acceptance of a dismal exit. This may be the truest form of masculinity for those that cannot hope for heaven, or blow smoke rings at hell.



And what of the other heroes? Aeneas falls even farther from the mark. He has a greater reason to stroke his own ego, and less of one to overrate his signifigance. He stands shorter than Achilles, but he stands nearer to history's midday, and so casts a longer shadow. He knows of the harvest of which he is the sower, and which he will not taste. His reward is only peace in a home he has not himself chosen. . .

More Later.

He Had a Cigar Named after Him, So He Must Know Something

"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."

"Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed."

"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."

"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried."

"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."

-Winston Churchill-

In No Strange Land

'The Kingdom of God is Within You'

O world invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!

Does the fish soar to find the ocean,
The eagle plunge to find the air-
That we ask of the stars in motion
If they have rumour of thee there?

Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumb'd conceiving soars!
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shutter'd doors.

The angels keep their ancient places;-
Turn but a stone, and start a wing!
'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces,
That miss the many-spleandour'd thing!

But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry;- and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder
Pitched between Heaven and Charing Cross.

Yea, in the night, my soul, my daughter,
Cry,- clinging Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water,
Not of Gennesareth, but Thames!

-Francis Thompson-