Cawdra 1, from a new series Maureen Dowd, the waspishly wicked op ed writer at the New York Times, has periodic moments of reverie between her excoriating defamations of politicians. In a column that appeared in December, she touched on a theme that has been a steady leitmotif of this blog: silence. As fiendish little […]
Wisdom
Not Being Welcome
View of the Great Salt Lake near Smithson’s Spiral Jetty I was introduced to the writer Barry Lopez after reading his thoughtful introduction to John Fowles‘ timeless book, The Tree (more about that here.) One of the essays included in the collection, About This Life, describes a trip Lopez took to the remote landscape of […]
In Search of the Minor Exceptions
Only one tree in my Brookline neighborhood is hosting a playful colony of shell-like parasols My last post elicited several provocative comments and instigated a number of compelling conversations over the last few days. As a result I have continued to sit with several of ideas presented in The Tree, by John Fowles. It is […]
- Art Making
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Scaling Solitude
The lone wise one, from the caves at Ajanta, India I increasingly apply a sliding scale to assess most situations. It is one way of skirting the tendency in contemporary dialogue to Manichaean, black and white with nothing in between, either/or thinking. This is similar to how Asperger’s Syndrome is now being evaluated—you can have […]
- Aesthetics
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Martian Muse and Richard Tuttle
Carbon Dioxide Ice in the Late Summer Fan and Dust Devil in Deuteronilus Mensa Jumbled Terrain in Ius Chasma There are mornings when language just isn’t of service to what is happening in the interior landscape. So it is ironic that in the language-centric world that is most online environments, the “out of language” still […]
The Fate of Ideas
Last summer The Atlantic featured “14 Biggest Ideas of the Year.” My response—as was almost everyone else’s I spoke to about that article—started out excited but quickly deflated. The “ideas” were more platitudinously ordinary than inspiring: “Wall Street: Same as it Ever Was”, or the number one choice, “The Rise of the Middle Class — […]
A Translucent Network of Minimal Surprises
The storm chez moi: One tree was lost on our street, and a downed branch in the Hall’s Pond Sanctuary _______ Years of solitude had taught him that, in one’s memory, all days tend to be the same, but that there is not a day, not even in jail or in the hospital, which does […]
- Philosophy
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Weather Patterns
Skyline of the Wasatch Mountains in Salt Lake just after a cloudburst Yesterday I heard an interview with an American journalist on NPR. She has spent most of the last 8 years in Afghanistan reporting on the war. In the process she developed a deep affection for the country and its plight, so much so […]
Yield and Surrender
Yet another excerpt from the interview with Ted Kooser (see the post below as well) in Guernica magazine. This one is about yield: If you can find two poems in a book, it could be a pretty good book for you. You know, two poems you really like. There are some poets who are fairly […]
The Island Becoming the World
Robinson Crusoe Island Has it happened to you yet? Have the plethora of responses to David Foster Wallace’s posthumous novel, The Pale King, worn your interest thin? If yes, then this isn’t for you. I am not yet finished observing and partaking of the phenom that is DFW, of the increasingly long shadow that has […]