. It often seems to me that the sheer uniqueness of our existence, its frailty, and the uncertainty of my own survival beyond the span of a few years would call for outbursts of celebration, outbursts of a different sort than the ones coming from me. Instead, I’m spending my time with myopic affairs. This … Continue reading
. The whole space shivers — how can we maintain our composure, thinking of our whole body contracting and dilating every which way by a fraction of the diameter of a proton? Not that we or our friends would notice it, but it is the idea that counts: that our very dimensions are changed by … Continue reading
. I see Kurt Vonnegut’s luminescent beings, thoseHacksaw Ridge movie streaming propelled by incessant farting on another planet — the name is of no consequence — caught in the act of foreplay, giddy at that. The world watches, listens for needles to drop, the ocean boils in anticipation, the fish are open-mouthed and shudder at … Continue reading
. It was the experience of wandering around in his own mind, during all his wake moments, like a man who walks in the thicket of a forest, forgetful yet with bouts of certainty and firm knowledge that a treasure was there that would never go away. And just like that man walking by chance … Continue reading
. I have spent time lately reading John Berger’s Selected Essays (ed. Geoff Dyer). It is a treasure trove of gems. Here, an excerpt from an essay entitled “White Bird:” . “Art does not imitate nature, it imitates a creation, sometimes to propose an alternative world, sometimes simpy to amplify, to confirm, to make social … Continue reading
. It is not often that one sees asterixes in the landscape, but here they proliferate, as if many footnotes are needed to be accommodated in a text we cannot (yet) fully understand.
High above our thoughts and aspirations, there is beauty, incomprehensible beauty. download Rogue One: A Star Wars Story 2016 movie We need to sit still to take it all in. We are creatures that are capable of awe, that is, an unflinging openness to entirely new experiences. . . .
The annual pillow fight at West Point Academy has turned bloody this summer. Metal objects hidden inside the pillows caused concussions, broken bones, and a lot of blood. It is an exercise — we should grant this to the young creative cadets — that is much more realistic in preparation for real combat, which has … Continue reading
It all makes sense now. Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, the inventor of the broken windows law, cannot see the display of a naked breast in public as anything but the first step toward Sodom and Gomorrah. And we have all been told what happened to that place after it was torn up by God’s wrath!
Decapitation emerges as a theme of the chaotic world we live in. In Games of Thrones the act of decapitating is liberally pursued; entire fences are shown stacked with heads whose contorted faces give us nightmares. A copycat act in France resulted in the head of a Frenchman spiked on a fence. ISIS has used … Continue reading
Today I received an e-mail from an unknown person in Japan. It seems that this person is part of the Royal family, and in some state of distress. Is it the granddaughter of the Emperor who is blowing the whistle? Reading the message, we will never now. Why do I get messages from a member … Continue reading
Some people who know me know that I’m working in the field of translation, meaning translation of genetic code into a sequence of amino acids forming a protein, or protein biosynthesis. So much so good. Or rather, I’m sure I lost 90% of the audience already. Now the remaining ones please bear with me. In … Continue reading
Now that it is spring again we count our days and years and blessings. If we had a way to stop the process of time, when exactly would we halt it? These are the glorious days of almond trees in bloom, like the one across the Public School, and of daffodils soon to come … Continue reading
. At my former dentist’s office in Albany I saw the Adirondacks in full colors on the wall while my teeth were being polished or repaired. Now the half-finished puzzle reminds me of the picture, and the way it fades in my memory, since the main thing I remember is the waterfall and the full … Continue reading
. We all talk about it. It is on our minds. How can he? How could he? What state of mind can a man have who could, who would do the unthinkable? But in the midst of the shock and the unbearable images and the thought of a plane and its human cargo running 600 … Continue reading
“Some say an army of horsemen, some of footsoldiers, some of ships, is the fairest thing on the black earth, but I say it is what one loves.” . . Sappho, ~600 B.C. . .
. An incidental lookup, spurred by curiosity, produced a surprise: Anecdote goes back to a Greek root and means “something unpublished.” So it refers to a story, in other words, that has not gotten the blessing by our custodians of knowledge, those editors of Nature, Science, Cell, EMBO Journal, Granta, The New Yorker, Paris Review, … Continue reading
When we shudder at the atrocities inflicted by ISIS, as deeds that transgress every notion of decent human behavior, we must think back at our own contribution to the deterioration of mores, under George W. Bush. We have to remind ourselves of Abu Ghraib, and the justification of torture as a means to extort information … Continue reading
I would like to bring an article (see link below! But be quick!) to your attention that is an eye-opener regarding the permanence of information on the web, which we often take for granted. The article is breathtaking to read, but it should be required reading for everybody who is doing scientific research or creative … Continue reading
Today’s article about scrolls from Pompeii fuels the imagination. The papyrus scrolls were dehydrated by the burning volcanic ash, but they are still intact. They cannot be unrolled since they would fall apart like Turkish sweets, and the writing inside was inaccessible for years after it was discovered. Now people have used high-energy high-intensity X-rays … Continue reading
