Log24

Sunday, July 10, 2022

Midnight in the Garden

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am

Today's date — "10" or one-zero — suggests a review of base-16
(hexadecimal) notation. In hexadecimal, "10" means 16.

See as well some other Geek Lore.

Thursday, April 4, 2019

Midnight in the Garden . . .

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:59 pm

Continues . 

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Midnight in the Garden

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am

Some historical background

Thursday, March 2, 2017

Midnight in the Garden

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 am

(Continues, for Warren Beatty)

Howard Hughes in Spruce Goose

“A Passion that Kills,” by Markus Pierson (wood sculpture, 1988)

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Midnight in the Garden

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am

Continues .

Saturday, April 9, 2016

Midnight in the Garden Continues

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 am

Scene from a 1997 film by Clint Eastwood:

Related remarks by Wallace Stevens —

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Midnight in the Garden

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am

(Continued)

Are we there yet?


    Click image to enlarge.

Saturday, July 11, 2015

Midnight in the Garden of Allah

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 am

From Universals Revisited, Leap Day, 2012 —

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

Midnight in the Garden

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:59 pm

Blaine Gibson, Designer of Lifelike Robots
at Disney Parks, Dies at 97

Log24 remarks on Sunday, July 5, the reported date of
Gibson's death:

Thursday, March 19, 2015

Midnight in the Garden continues…

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am

See also Icon and a fresh New York Times  obituary.

Happy birthday to Jill Abramson.

Saturday, June 14, 2014

Midnight in the Garden…

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 am

Continues.

The growth of consciousness is everything…
the seed of awareness sending its roots
across space and time. But it can grow in so many ways,
spinning its web from mind to mind like the spider
or burrowing into the unconscious darkness like the snake.
The biggest wars are the wars of thought.”

— Fritz Leiber, “The Oldest Soldier” (1960)

Update of 10 PM Saturday, June 14, 2014:
The first link above now leads to Log24 posts tagged
“Consciousness Growth.”  This tag is used only to select
specific posts in this journal.  It should not  be seen as
related to any material of the sort one can find in
a Web search for “growth of consciousness.”

Monday, August 19, 2013

Midnight in the Garden

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 am

(Continued)

From a 2003 interview by Paul Devlin (PD) with poet John Hollander (JH),
who reportedly died Saturday

PD: You wrote in the introduction to the new edition of  Reflections on Espionage that whenever you have been "free of political callowness" it was partly as a result of reading W.H. Auden, George Orwell, and George Bernard Shaw. Do you think these writers might possibly be an antidote to political callowness that exists in much contemporary literary criticism?

JH: If not they, then some other writers who can help one develop within one a skepticism strongly intertwined with passion, so that each can simultaneously check and reinforce the other. It provides great protection from being overcome by blind, true-believing zeal and corrupting cynicism (which may be two sides of the same false coin). Shaw was a great teacher for many in my generation. I started reading him when I was in sixth grade, and I responded strongly not only to the wit but to various modes, scene and occasions of argument and debate as they were framed by various kinds of dramatic situation. I remember being electrified when quite young by the moment in the epilogue scene of Saint  Joan  when the English chaplain, De Stogumber, who had been so zealous in urging for Joan’s being burned at the stake, returns to testify about how seeing her suffering the flames had made a changed man of him. The Inquisitor, Peter Cauchon, calls out (with what I imagined was a kind of moral distaste I’d never been aware of before), "Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those who have no imagination?" It introduced me to a skepticism about the self-satisfaction of the born-again, of any persuasion. With Auden and Orwell, much later on and after my mental world had become more complicated, it was education in negotiating a living way between a destructively naïve idealism and the crackpot realism—equally inimical to the pragmatic.

PD: Would you consider yourself a "formal" pragmatist, i.e., a student of Peirce, James, Dewey, Mead (etc.) or an "informal" pragmatist – someone taking the common-sense position on events…or someone who refuses to be pigeon-holed politically?

JH: "Informal" – of the sort that often leads me to ask of theoretical formulations, "Yes, but what’s it for ?"

PD: Which other authors do you think might help us negotiate between "naïve idealism" and "crackpot realism"? I think of Joyce, Wallace Stevens, perhaps Faulkner?

JH: When I was in college, a strong teacher for just this question was Cervantes. One feels, in an Emersonian way, that the Don’s view of the world is correct at midnight, and Sancho’s at noon.

Then there is mathematical  realism.

A post in this journal on Saturday, the reported date of Hollander's death,
discussed a possible 21st-century application of 19th-century geometry.
For some background, see Peter J. Cameron's May 11, 2010, remarks
on Sylvester's duads  and synthemes . The following figure from the 
paper discussed here Saturday is related to figures in Cameron's remarks.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Midnight in the Garden

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 am

(Continued)

See Robert Hughes in this journal.

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Midnight in the Garden

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 12:00 am

(Continued, to mark Tuesday's birthdays of Lincoln and Darwin.)

A British reporter who died at 97 on Tuesday is said to have
"covered the space race in its entirety." In his honor, here
in review are posts containing the phrase Space Race
and, more generally, the two words Galois + Space.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Midnight in the Garden

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 am

(Continued)

     For a related essay, click on the image below.

    

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Midnight in the Garden

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 am

(Continued from February 10.)

A passage suggested by the T.S. Eliot epigraphs in
Parallelisms of Compete Designs , by a weblog post
of Peter J. Cameron yesterday, and by this journal's
"Within You Without You" posts—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix12/120215-Campbell-InnerOuter.jpg
— Joseph Campbell, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space:
     Metaphor as Myth and as Religion ,
New World Library,
     Second Edition, St. Bridget's Day 2002, page 106

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Midnight in the Garden (continued)

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 12:00 am

The Diamond Star

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11B/110905-StellaOctangulaView.jpg

See Configurations and Squares.

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Midnight in the Garden (continued)–

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am

Tracking Shot

IMAGE- Cinema column dated Oct. 1, 2009

Related material—

IMAGE- Quote from Hoyle's 'October the First is Too Late'

See also this journal's September 2009 posts.

This  post was suggested by today's previous post and by today's NY Lottery.
For some background to the ioncinema.com post numbered 4210 above,
see, in conjunction with the page headed "Azazel" linked to here earlier today,
the ioncinema.com post numbered 5601.

“Stranger, dreams verily are baffling and unclear of meaning,
and in no wise do they find fulfillment in all things for men.

For two are the gates of shadowy dreams,
and one is fashioned of horn and one of ivory.
Those dreams that pass through the gate of sawn ivory
deceive men, bringing words that find no fulfillment.
But those that come forth through the gate of polished horn
bring true issues to pass, when any mortal sees them.

But in my case it was not from thence, methinks,
that my strange dream came.”

Homer, Odyssey , Book 19

Translation by A.T. Murray, in two volumes.
Harvard University Press, 1919

Quoted in a press release for the film "Two Gates of Sleep."

From the post numbered 460 in this  journal—

At the still point… from the film "Absolute Power" :

IMAGE- Gene Hackman and Judy Davis dance in 'Absolute Power'
Photo credit – Graham Kuhn

I’ve heard of affairs that are strictly plutonic,
But diamonds are a girl’s best friend!

Marilyn Monroe, modeling a Freudian slip

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Midnight in the Garden (continued)

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am

From Rough Magic , starring Russell Crowe and Bridget Fonda (1995)—

Bridget Fonda in 'Rough Magic'

Bridget brought her rabbits,
There was magic in the air…

— Adapted from "Garden Party"—

Can't please everyone, so you
Got to please yourself.

From The Chronicles of Narnia, Voyage of the Dawn Treader

"… Sometimes, perhaps, I am a little impatient, waiting for the day
when they can be governed by wisdom instead of this rough magic."

"All in good time, Coriakin," said Aslan.

"Yes, all in very good time, Sir," was the answer.

From Another Manic Monday (Feb. 21)—

We are now at the Year of the Rabbit

(Click images for sources.)

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110221-DarkoRabbitSm.jpg IMAGE- Scene from a film based on the old SF story 'Mimsy Were the Borogoves'

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Midnight in the Garden continues…

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:59 pm

Today's funeral Mass for Sargent Shriver,
tonight's review in the New York TImes  of a singer
from the Kollege of Musical Knowledge,
and today's New York lottery numbers suggest the following links—

8/15 and 9/10.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Midnight in the Garden, continued

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 am
 

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/101113-GoogleLogoStevensonDetail.jpg

Detail from Google logo of Nov. 13, 2010

Related material: After Eden  and Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Midnight in the Garden continued

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am

Lottery hermeneutics for yesterday's numbers—

PA— Midday 711, Evening 039.

NY— Midday 440, Evening 704.

Simple interpretive methods— numbers as dates and as hexagram numbers— yield 7/11, hexagram 39, and 7/04.

The reader may supply his own interpretations of 7/11 and 7/04; for hexagram 39, see Wilhelm's commentary

"The hexagram pictures a dangerous abyss lying before us
  and a steep, inaccessible mountain rising behind us."

— and the cover of Cold Mountain

The image 
“http://www.log24.com/log/pix05A/050703-Cold.jpg” cannot be displayed, 
because it contains errors.

Adapted from cover of
German edition of Cold Mountain

This suggests revisiting The Edge of Eternity (July 5, 2005).

The hermeneutics of the NY midday 440 is more difficult. A Google search suggests that a Log24 post for Epiphany 2004, "720 in the Book," might yield a clue to the 440 riddle.

Image-- 'What is a closed-form number?'

By all means, let us 440.

Monday, June 19, 2023

New Career Paths

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:25 pm

"Experience the magic of Mexico." — Delta vacations ad.

See also Midnight in the Garden (March 15, 2011
and New Day Nina (September 22, 2011).

Sunday, February 28, 2021

Language Games

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:31 pm

    Click Nina for the above film from Good Friday, 2019.

IMAGE- 'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil' and 'I Put a Spell on You'

Thursday, January 21, 2021

Man Date

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 5:59 pm

The New York Times  this afternoon reports
the death of an author last year
“somewhere between May 2 and May 15.”

“Down and down I go, round and round I go”
Kevin Spacey in the soundtrack album for
“Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil”

Tuesday, October 27, 2020

“To Illustrate My Last Remark”*

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 9:32 am

* Song lyric, soundtrack album of
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Point of Reference

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 pm

A note from the director of the 2014 Scarlett Johansson film Lucy :

Revised version of a post of February 9, 2006, with links repaired:

Space, Time, and Scarlett

 

From last night’s Grammy awards, lyrics:

“a place where there’s no space or time”
– Leon Russell

Aguilera's version wasn't bad, but …

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06/060209-Blondes.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

“Scarlett Johansson does this ‘old Hollywood glam’ look
much better.”

For a reference to the place described in Russell’s lyrics,
see the riff on the number “265″ linked to in last night’s
Midnight in the Garden of the Soul.”

The "point of reference" outside space and time
in the 2006 Johansson post above is of course "265."

For Plato's remarks at this reference point, see Phaedrus
265d and 265e in this morning's post.

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Mate

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am

(Midnight in the Garden, continued)

E is for Ending 

Cullinane = Cullinan + E

And for Everlast.

(The Cullinan link above is to a woman
who apparently is the wife of writer
Alan Cowell. See The Revisiting, Dec. 3rd.)

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Sermon

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:00 am

IMAGE- Book cover symbolizing postmodern theory with a minus sign and biblical theology with a plus sign

"Accentuate the Positive."

— Clint Eastwood, soundtrack album for
"Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil."

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Jack and Jill

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

The New Yorker 's online Book Bench has an entertaining
approach to Jack's "All work and no play…" in "The Shining."
For some background, see this morning's previous Log24
post, The Thing Itself.

That post gives some background for the
Midnight in the Garden post of September 6th.

Also on September 6th… See Jill.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Spelling Brougham*

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am

Midsummer Night in the Garden of Good and Evil, starring Nina Simone

Click for details.

Related material—

Midnight in the Garden on the Ides of March and New Day Nina.

* For the title, see an historical note on October the 16th.
   For a related novel, see Groundhog Day 2009.

Monday, July 25, 2011

The Game

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 9:00 am

Virginia Heffernan in Sunday's online New York Times

"… In the past, information on paper was something to read. Bricks and mortar were a place to be. But, since the first appearance of the Web in 1990, we have come to accept that information in pixels is something to read— and also a place to be . That familiar and yet still jaw-dropping metaphor takes energy to maintain. The odd shared sense that there’s three-dimensionality and immersion and real-world consequences on the Web as in no book or board game— that’s the Web’s sine qua non. Hence, cyberspace . And 'being on' the Internet….

… The dominant social networks are fantasy games built around rigged avatars, outright fictions and a silent— and often unconscious— agreement among players that the game and its somewhat creaky conceits influence the real world…."

— "The Confidence Game at Google+"

"It's just another manic Monday
I wish it was Sunday
'Cause that's my funday"
— The Bangles

"Accentuate the Positive"
— Clint Eastwood, soundtrack album
 for "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil"

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110410-Sugimoto-AndoChurch.jpg

This journal on All Saints' Day, Sunday, November 1, 2009

Suggested by the New York State lottery numbers on All Hallows’ Eve [2009]—

430 (mid-day) and 168 (evening)…

From 430 as a date, 4/30

Beyond Grief and Nothing: A Reading of Don DeLillo , by Joseph Dewey, University of South Carolina Press, 2006, page 123:

“It is as if DeLillo himself had moved to an endgame….”

For such an endgame, see yesterday’s link to a Mira Sorvino drama.

The number 168 suggested by the Halloween lottery deals with the properties of space itself and requires a more detailed exegesis…

For the full picture, consider the Log24 entries of Feb. 16-28 this year, esp. the entries of Feb. 27 and the phrase they suggest—

Flores, flores para los muertos.

      See also Pearly Gates of Cyberspace in this journal.

      For flores para los muertos , see today's Times .

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Every Picture Tells a Story

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:28 am

Background— Midnight's post.

IMAGE- 'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil' and 'I Put a Spell on You'

IMAGE- 'Waiting for Guffman' audition

IMAGE- 'I've Got Your Number' rendition

IMAGE- May 3, 2008- 'Take a number' at Dairy Queen

This journal on the above "Take a Number" Dairy Queen date—

Saturday May 3, 2008

m759 @ 11:07 PM
 
“Teach us to
 number our days.”

Psalm 90, verse 12

The New Yorker,
issue dated Oct. 1, 2007 —

James Wood on Robert Alter’s new translation of the Psalms:

“At any time, God can cancel a life. ‘So teach us to number our days,’ as the King James Version has it, ‘that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.’….

The ancient Hebrew word for the shadowy underworld where the dead go, Sheol, was Christianized as ‘Hell,’ even though there is no such concept in the Hebrew Bible. Alter prefers the words ‘victory’ and ‘rescue’ as translations of yeshu’ah, and eschews the Christian version, which is the heavily loaded ‘salvation.’ And so on. Stripping his English of these artificial cleansers, Alter takes us back to the essence of the meaning. Suddenly, in a world without Heaven, Hell, the soul, and eternal salvation or redemption, the theological stakes seem more local and temporal: ‘So teach us to number our days.’”

Today’s numbers from the
Pennsylvania Lottery:

PA Lottery Saturday, May 3, 2008: Mid-day 510, Evening 724

which, being interpreted,
is 5/10 and 7/24.

Selah.

Monday, July 26, 2010

Brightness at Noon continued

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

Riddle

"Midnight in the Garden continued," a post of 12:00 AM July 20, posed the riddle of what the previous day's NY Lottery midday "440" might mean.

A jocular answer was given. Some background for a more serious answer—

Paul Newall, “Kieślowski’s Three Colours Trilogy”

“Julie recognises the music of the busker outside playing a recorder as that of her husband’s. When she asks him where he heard it, he replies that he makes up all sorts of things. This is an instance of a theory of Kieślowski’s that ‘different people, in different places, are thinking the same thing but for different reasons.’ With regard to music in particular, he held what might be characterised as a Platonic view according to which notes pre-exist and are picked out and assembled by people. That these can accord with one another is a sign of what connects people, or so he believed.”

In honor of Wye Jamison Allanbrook, author of Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart, we note that 440 is Concert A.

Allanbrook died on July 15. See this journal on that date—

Angels in the Architecture,
Happy Birthday, and
Brightness at Noon.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Wednesday September 30, 2009

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 9:48 am

Midnight in the Garden, Autumn 2009

 

Review:

Der Einsatz
 
Motto of Plato's Academy: 'Let no one ignorant of geometry enter'
The Ninefold Square (a 3x3 grid)

The New York Times Magazine on Sunday, Sept. 20, 2009:
 
'The Holy Grail of the Unconscious' at The New York Times

From this journal on the following day, Sept. 21:

Pearl Jam 'Backspacer' album released Sept. 20, 2009

Happy birthday, Stephen King.

Today's previous entry is based on a song, "Unthought Known,"
from the above album; the cover of the album uses the 3×3 grid
shown in Sept. 20's midnight review. For related material
on the unconscious, see June 13-15, 2005.

I know more than Apollo,
For oft when he lies sleeping
I see the stars at mortal wars
In the wounded welkin weeping.

Tom O'Bedlam's Song

Friday, March 13, 2009

Friday March 13, 2009

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am
Midnight in the Garden

From 12:00 AM on last month’s
Friday the 13th:

'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil' and 'I Put a Spell on You'

From the soundtrack CD of
“Midnight in the Garden
  of Good and Evil”–

“Accentuate the positive.”
— Clint Eastwood 

MODE online:

Wilhelmina Slater, MODE editor-in-chief My advice for this month is to learn the lesson from the young and innocent. Embrace optimism and go forward with life, hoping only for the best…. Accentuate your positives and don’t worry about your negatives…. Because when you smile, others smile back.

Wilhelmina Slater

Friday, February 13, 2009

Friday February 13, 2009

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am
Happy birthday to
King Friday XIII
and friend:

Mr. Rogers and King Friday XIII

Yesterday, by the way,
was Georgia Day
in Savannah
.

'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil' and 'I Put a Spell on You'

“I Put a Spell on You”
— Nina Simone,
title of autobiograpy


“The voodoo priestess looked across the table at her wealthy client, a man on trial for murder: ‘Now, you know how dead time works. Dead time lasts for one hour– from half an hour before midnight to half an hour after midnight. The half-hour before midnight is for doin’ good. The half-hour after midnight is for doin’ evil….'”

— Glenna Whitley, “Voodoo Justice,” The New York Times, March 20, 1994

Friday, July 6, 2007

Friday July 6, 2007

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 12:26 am
Midnight in the Garden
of Good and Evil

continued from
Midsummer Night

“The voodoo priestess looked across the table at her wealthy client, a man on trial for murder: ‘Now, you know how dead time works. Dead time lasts for one hour– from half an hour before midnight to half an hour after midnight. The half-hour before midnight is for doin’ good. The half-hour after midnight is for doin’ evil….'”


— Glenna Whitley, “Voodoo Justice,”
The New York Times, March 20, 1994


The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061019-Coxeter.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

In Other Game News:

“In June, bloggers speculated that the Xbox 360 return problem was getting so severe that the company was running out of ‘coffins,’ or special return-shipping boxes Microsoft provides to gamers with dead consoles. ‘We’ll make sure we have plenty of boxes to go back and forth,’ Bach said in an interview.”

The picture of
“Coxeter Exhuming Geometry”
suggests the following
illustration, based
in part on
 Plato’s poem to Aster:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061019-Tombstones.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Related material:

Thursday’s last entry

and

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050310-hex.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Sex and Art
in a
Chinese Poem

The proportions of
the above rectangle
may suggest to some
a coffin; they are
meant to suggest
a monolith.

Saturday, June 23, 2007

Saturday June 23, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 6:00 pm
Raiders of
the Lost Stone

 
continued from March 10, 2006

The Roman Imperial Eagle
and, according to
C. B. DeMille in 1932 —

Opening of The Sign of the Cross (1932)

The above photo is courtesy of
the Cecil B. DeMille Collection
at DVD Beaver.

Sharon Stone in the pulpit of Harvard's Memorial Church
HARVARD CRIMSON/ ALEX R. LEVIN

Sharon Stone lectures at
Harvard’s Memorial Church

on March 14, 2005…

Ready when you are, C. B.

Related material —
Log24, Oct. 26, 2002 —

Midnight in the Garden,
starring

Nina Simone and eight-point star

Nina Simone

Sunday, April 8, 2007

Sunday April 8, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 am
Midnight in the Garden
continued from Sept. 30, 2004

Tonight this journal had two Xanga footprints from Italy….

At 11:34 PM ET a visitor from Italy viewed a page containing an entry from Jan. 8, 2005, Splendor of the Light, which offers the following quotation–

From an essay on Guy Davenport
 

"A disciple of Ezra Pound, he adapts to the short story the ideogrammatic method of The Cantos, where a grammar of images, emblems, and symbols replaces that of logical sequence. This grammar allows for the grafting of particulars into a congeries of implied relation without subordination. In contrast to postmodernists, Davenport does not omit causal connection and linear narrative continuity for the sake of an aleatory play of signification but in order to intimate by combinational logic kinships and correspondences among eras, ideas and forces."

— "When Novelists Become Cubists: The Prose Ideograms of Guy Davenport," by Andre Furlani

The visitor from Italy may, of course, have instead intended to view one of the four earlier entries on the page.  In particular, the visitor may have seen

The Star
of Venus

"He looked at the fading light
in the western sky and saw Mercury,
or perhaps it was Venus,
gleaming at him as the evening star.
Darkness and light,
the old man thought.
It is what every hero legend is about.
The darkness which is more than death,
the light which is love, like our friend
Venus here, or perhaps this star is
Mercury, the messenger of Olympus,
the bringer of hope."

Roderick MacLeish, Prince Ombra.

At 11:38 PM ET, a visitor from Italy (very likely the 11:34 visitor returning) viewed the five Log24 entries ending at 12:06 AM ET on Sept. 30, 2004. 

These entries included Midnight in the Garden and…

A Tune for Michaelmas

Mozart, K 265, midi

The entries on this second visited page also included some remarks on Dante, on time, and on Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano that are relevant to Log24 entries earlier this week on Maundy Thursday and on Holy Saturday.

Here's wishing a happy Easter to Italy, to Francis Ford Coppola and Russell Crowe (see yesterday's entry), and to Steven Spielberg (see the Easter page of April 20, 2003).

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070408-Prayer.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Image courtesy of
Hollywood Jesus:

When you wish
upon a star…

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Sunday March 26, 2006

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 am
Midnight in the Garden
continued

Questions posed by
Roberta Smith in the
New York Times
of Jan. 13, 2006:

“‘What is art?’ may be the
art world’s most relentlessly asked
question. But a more pertinent one
right now is,  ‘What is an art gallery?'”

—  from “Who Needs a
White Cube These Days?

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06/060320-Masks.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

An example that may help:
London’s White Cube gallery
and its current Liza Lou exhibit,
which is said to convey
a palpable sense of use,
damage, lost time, lost lives
.”

See the previous entry for details.

On the brighter side, we have

Clint Eastwood on the
“Midnight in the Garden
of Good and Evil”
soundtrack CD

“Accentuate the positive”–

and an entry from last Christmas:

Compare and contrast:


(Click on pictures
for details.)


The image “http://www.log24.com/theory/images/EightfoldCubeCover.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

The image “http://www.log24.com/theory/images/EightfoldWayCover.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

“Recollect what I have said to you,
that this world is a comedy
to those who think,
a tragedy to those who feel.
This is the quint-essence of all
I have learnt in fifty years!”

Horace Walpole,
  letter to Horace Mann,
5 March, 1772

Friday, March 17, 2006

Friday March 17, 2006

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 5:00 pm
Dogma in the
State of Grace

“Words and numbers are of equal value,
for, in the cloak of knowledge,
one is warp and the other woof.”

— The princesses Rhyme and Reason
in The Phantom Tollbooth,
by Norton Juster, 1961

(From a Sermon for
St. Patrick’s Day, 2001
)

The Pennsylvania midday lottery
on St. Patrick’s Day, 2006:

618.

Comparing, as in Philadelphia Stories,  the Catholic style of Grace Kelly with the Protestant style of Katharine Hepburn, we conclude that Princess Rhyme might best be played by the former, Princess Reason by the latter.

Reason informs us that the lottery result “618” may be regarded as naming ” – 0.618,” the approximate value of the negative solution to the equation

x2 – x – 1 = 0

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050208-Crowe.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Following the advice of Clint Eastwood (on the “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” soundtrack CD) to “accentuate the positive,” Reason notes that the other, positive, solution to this equation, approximately 1.618, a number symbolized by the Greek letter “phi,” occurs in the following geometric diagram illustrating a construction of the pentagon:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050208-pentagon2.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

For further enlightenment, we turn to Rhyme, who informs us that “618” may also be regarded as naming the date “6/18.” Consulting our notes, we find on 6/18, 2003, a reference to “claves,” Latin for “keys,” as in “claves regni caelorum.”

We may tarry at this date, pleased to find that the keys to the kingdom involve rational numbers, rather than the irrational ratios suggested, paradoxically, by Reason.

Or we may, with Miles Davis, prefer a more sensuous incarnation of the keys:

The image �http://www.log24.com/log/pix06/060125-ZenerKeys.jpg� cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Alicia Keys

“… it’s going to be
accomplished in steps,
this establishment
of the Talented in
  the scheme of things.”

— Anne McCaffrey, 
Radcliffe ’47,
To Ride Pegasus

Thursday, February 9, 2006

Thursday February 9, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:24 pm

Space, Time, and Scarlett

From last night’s Grammy awards, lyrics performed by Christina Aguilera and Herbie Hancock:

“a place where there’s no space or time”
Leon Russell

Not bad, but as Kat358 noted on May 4, 2005,

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06/060209-Blondes.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

“Scarlett Johansson does this ‘old Hollywood glam’ look much better.”

For a reference to the place described in Russell’s lyrics, see the riff on the number “265”
linked to in last night’s “Midnight in the Garden of the Soul.”

Related material– Jazz Improvisation:

“Once an appropriate group of people has been assembled, you must decide what to play.”

Thursday February 9, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 am
Midnight in the Garden
of the Soul

(continued)This time slot, reserved at midnight,
seems to belong to Frank Goodman,
who, according to this morning’s
(3 AM) New York Times, was
“one of the last of the old-time
Broadway press agents.”

Related material:

Yesterday afternoon’s entry
on a fictional “press agent
for ‘The Garden of the Soul,'”
and the entry on death
and gardens from Friday,
Feb. 3, 2006, the day
Frank Goodman died.

Saturday, May 28, 2005

Saturday May 28, 2005

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 am

Midnight in the Garden,
continued:

Birth and Death

Today's birthdays:
Kylie Minogue and John Fogerty.
Get well soon, Bad Moon.

And in memory of Eddie Albert,
a talented actor who died
on Thursday, May 26, 2005,
at his home in California
and was born on April 22, 1906,
in Rock Island, Illinois:

Well if you want to ride
you gotta ride it like you find it.
Get your ticket at the station
of the Rock Island Line.


Among his films:

Escape to Witch Mountain.

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Wednesday May 25, 2005

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am
Midnight in the Garden
continued

“Poetry is a satisfying of
the desire for resemblance….
If resemblance is described as
a partial similarity between
two dissimilar things,
it complements and reinforces
that which the two dissimilar things
have in common.
It makes it brilliant.”

— Wallace Stevens,
    “Three Academic Pieces” in
    The Necessary Angel (1951)

Two dissimilar things:

1.  A talk to be given at a conference on “Mathematics and Narrative” in Mykonos in July:

Mark Turner,
“The Role of Narrative Imagining in Blended Mathematical Concepts” —

Abstract:
The Way We Think (Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner; Basic Books, 2002) presents a theory of conceptual integration, or “blending,” as a basic mental operation. See http://blending.stanford.edu. This talk will explore some ways in which narrative imagining plays a role in blended mathematical concepts.”

2.  An application of the “conceptual blending” of  Fauconnier and Turner to some journal entries of 2004:  Cognitive Blending and the Two Cultures.

Thursday, March 17, 2005

Thursday March 17, 2005

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am

Midnight Drums for Larry

The Harvard Crimson, March 16:

"Voting by secret ballot in a Faculty meeting at the Loeb Drama Center, 218 faculty members affirmed a motion put on the docket by Professor of Anthropology and of African and African American Studies J. Lorand Matory ’82, stating that 'the Faculty lacks confidence in the leadership of Lawrence H. Summers.' "

Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
:

Professor Matory is "a renowned expert on Brazil and on the Yoruba civilization of West Africa, which is world famous for its religious complexity and artistic creativity. He is equally noted for his study of such Latin American religions as Haitian 'Vodu,' Brazilian Candomblé, and Cuban Santería…."

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050317-Summers2.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

The Harvard Crimson, January 7, 2005:

"I came here with the goal of dancing with Larry Summers, and I did it," Chinwe U. Nwosu ’08 said. "He’s a great dancer."

"Now I can say that 'Bootylicious' is our song," she added.

"Atabaque – a large tom-tom
that is used in Afro-Brazilian
religious celebrations"

The Sounds of Samba
at Yale

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix04B/041016-Atabaque.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

— From Log24.net, Oct. 16, 2004:

Midnight in the Garden
continued

Thursday, September 30, 2004

Thursday September 30, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am

Midnight in the Garden

“With a little effort,
anything can be shown
to connect with anything else:
existence is infinitely

cross-referenced.”

— Opening sentence
of Martha Cooley’s
The Archivist

Woe unto
them that
call evil
good, and
good evil;
that put
darkness
for light,
and light
for darkness

Isaiah 5:20

As she spoke
about the Trees
of Life and Death,
I watched her…

The Archivist

The world
has gone
mad today
And good’s
bad today,
And black’s
white today,
And day’s
night today

Cole Porter

 Example:
Mozart’s K 265,
the page number 265,
and a story by George MacDonald.

Tuesday, August 17, 2004

Tuesday August 17, 2004

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 am

The Zen of Abraham

Today’s Zen Chautauqua, prompted by the fact that this is Abrahamic week at the real Chautauqua, consists of links to

The Matrix of Abraham,

Matrix of the Death God, and

Happy Birthday, Kate and Kevin.

The real Chautauqua’s program this week is, of course, Christian rather than Zen.  Its theme is “Building a Global Neighborhood: The Abrahamic Vision 2004.”  One of the featured performers is Loretta Lynn; in her honor (and, of course, that of Sissy Spacek), I will try to overcome the fear and loathing that the Semitic (i. e., “Abrahamic”) religions usually inspire in me.

To a mathematician, the phrase “global neighborhood” sounds like meaningless politico-religious bullshit —  a phrase I am sure accurately characterizes most of the discourse at Chautauqua this week.  But a Google search reveals an area of research — “particle swarm optimization” in which the phrase “global neighborhood” actually means something.  See

A Hybrid Particle Swarm
and Neural Network Approach
for Reactive Power Control,
by Paulo F. Ribeiro and
W. Kyle Schlansker
(pdf).

This article includes the following:

Given the sophistication of his writing, I am surprised at Schlansker’s Christian background:

A good omen for the future is the fact that Schlansker balances the looney Semitic (or “Abrahamic”) teachings of Christianity with good sound Aryan religion, in the form of the goddess Themis.

 Themis, often depicted as “Justice”

For those who must have an Abraham, Schlansker’s paper includes the following:

A Themis figure I prefer to the above:

For more on religious justice
at midnight in the garden of
good and evil, see the Log24
entries of Oct. 1-15, 2002.

For material on Aryan religion that is far superior to the damned nonsense at Chautauqua, New York, this week, see

Jane Ellen Harrison’s Themis: a Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, with an excursus on the ritual forms preserved in Greek tragedy by Gilbert Murray and a chapter on the origin of the Olympic games by F. M. Cornford.  Rev. 2nd ed., Cambridge, Cambridge U.P., 1927.

Those who prefer the modern religion of Scientism will of course believe that Themis is purely imaginary, and that truth is to be found in modern myths like that of Carl Sagan’s novel Contact, illustrated below.

Jodie Foster (an admirer of
Leni Riefenstahl) and the
opening of the 1936 Olympics

“Heraclitus…. says: ‘The ruler whose prophecy occurs at Delphi oute legei oute kryptei, neither gathers nor hides, alla semainei, but gives hints.'”
An Introduction to Metaphysics, by Martin Heidegger, Yale University Press paperback, 1959, p. 170

“The lord whose oracle is in Delphi neither indicates clearly nor conceals, but gives a sign.”
Adolf Holl, The Left Hand of God, Doubleday, 1998, p. 50

Tuesday, May 4, 2004

Tuesday May 4, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am

Midnight in the Garden of
Good and Evil, continued

Buddies Show Us
the Real Tillman


By MARK PURDY

San Jose Mercury News

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Once the out-of-towners stopped talking, the people from San Jose were allowed to speak. And the honesty erupted.

“Thank you for coming,” said Richard Tillman, the younger brother of Pat Tillman. “But with all respect to those who have been up here before me, Pat’s not with God. He’s not religious. He’s dead. It was amazing to be his little brother. He was the biggest champion I’ve ever seen.”

Commentary:

Maybe God doesn’t like religious people.

See The Four Last Things (6/4/03),

With Honors (6/5/03), and

Directions Out (4/26/04).

Thursday, April 22, 2004

Thursday April 22, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:14 pm

Inscape

Picture said to be of
a Japanese Skylark,
Hibari or Alauda japonica.
Photo: 05/2002, Nagano, Japan.

A false definition of “inscape”:

Brad Leithauser, New York Review of Books, April 29, 2004:

“Not surprisingly, most Hopkins criticism is secular at heart, though without always acknowledging just how distorted—how weirdly misguided— Hopkins himself would find all interpretations of a spiritual life that were drawn purely from the outside. For him, a failure to see how divine promptings informed his shaping internal life—his ‘inscape,’ his own term for it—was to miss everything of his life that mattered.”

A truer definition:

“By ‘inscape’ he [Hopkins] means the unified complex of characteristics that give each thing its uniqueness and that differentiate it from other things.”


A false invocation of the Lord:

Brad Leithauser, New York Review of Books, Sept. 26, 2002:

“I’d always thought ‘Skylark’ quite appealing, but it wasn’t until I heard Helen Forrest singing it, in a 1942 recording with Harry James and his Orchestra, that it became for me something far more: one of the greatest popular songs anybody ever wrote. With her modest delivery, a voice coaxing and plaintive, Forrest is a Little Girl Lost who always finds herself coming down on exactly the right note—no easy thing with a song of such unexpected chromatic turns. On paper, the Johnny Mercer lyric looks unpromising—antiquated and clunky:

Skylark,
Have you seen a valley green with Spring
Where my heart can go a-journeying,
Over the shadows and the rain
To a blossom-covered lane?

But in Helen Forrest’s performance, ‘Skylark’ turns out to be a perfect blend of pokiness and urgency, folksiness and ethereality—and all so convincing that it isn’t until the song is finished that you step back and say, ‘Good Lord, she’s singing to a bird!’ “


For Hopkins at midnight in the garden of good and evil, a truer invocation:

Friday, December 27, 2002
12:00 AM

Saint Hoagy’s Day

Today is the feast day of St. Hoagy Carmichael, who was born on the feast day of Cecelia, patron saint of music. This midnight’s site music is “Stardust,” by Carmichael (lyrics by Mitchell Parish). See also “Dead Poets Society” — my entry of Friday, December 13, on the Carmichael song “Skylark” — and the entry “Rhyme Scheme” of later that same day.

Wednesday, April 23, 2003

Wednesday April 23, 2003

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am

Midnight in the Garden
of Good and Evil
on Shakespeare’s Birthday

Tony Scherman on an April 7, 1968, recording by Nina Simone:

“…nobody could telescope more emotion into a single, idiosyncratically turned syllable (listen to the way she says the word “Savannah” in her spoken intro to “Sunday in Savannah.” It breaks your heart — and she ain’t even singin’ yet!).”

See also the following entries on midnight in the garden:

Trinity, Oct. 25, 2002

Midnight in the Garden, Oct. 26, 2002

Point of No Return, Dec. 10, 2002

Culture Clash at Midnight, Dec. 11, 2002

Dead Poets Society, Dec. 13, 2002

For the Dark Lady, Dec. 18, 2002

Nightmare Alley, Dec. 21, 2002

For the Green Lady, Dec. 21, 2002

“With a little effort, anything can be shown to connect with anything else: existence is infinitely cross-referenced.”

Opening sentence of Martha Cooley’s The Archivist

Woe unto
them that
call evil
good, and
good evil;
that put
darkness
for light,
and light
for darkness

Isaiah 5:20

 

 

As she spoke about the Trees of Life and Death, I watched her…. 
The Archivist

The world
has gone
mad today
And good’s
bad today,

And black’s
white today,
And day’s
night today

Cole Porter

 

 

Thursday, January 2, 2003

Thursday January 2, 2003

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:45 am

Faces of the Twentieth Century:
The Harvest Continues

“I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
And, éyes, héart, what looks, what lips yet gave you a
Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?”

— Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Hurrahing in Harvest”

Mary Brian

Joe Foss

“Cowboy, take me away.
Fly this girl as high as you can
into the wild blue.”

The Dixie Chicks

See
Culture Clash at Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
in my notes of December 11, 2002.

 

Wednesday, December 18, 2002

Wednesday December 18, 2002

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am

For the Dark Lady

On this midnight in the garden of good and evil, our new site music is “Nica’s Dream.”

From a website on composer Horace Silver:

“Horace Silver apparently composed Nica’s Dream (1956) for Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter-Rothschild, an English aristocrat and a very dear friend of his. She was known to the New York press as the Jazz Baroness and to the black musicians for whom she was something of a patron, simply as Nica. Her apartment in the fashionable Hotel Stanhope on Fifth Avenue became a ‘hospitality suite for some of the greatest jazz players of the day, whom she treated generously.’ (Jack Chambers, Milestones: The Music and Times of Miles Davis, University of Toronto Press, 1985, 1:248)

This music is not unrelated to the work of Thomas Pynchon.  From an essay by Charles Hollander:  

“There are some notable parallels between Nica and the woman Stencil knows as V., who started her career with ‘…a young crude Mata Hari act.’ (V.; 386)….  Not that V. is Nica in any roman a clef sense: she is not. But the resonances are powerful at the level of the subtext. Nica is a Rothschild whose life reflects the issues Pynchon wants us to attend in V.: disinheritance, old dynasty vs. new dynasty, secret agents and couriers, plots and counter-plots, ‘The Big One, the century’s master cabal,’ and ‘the ultimate Plot Which Has No Name’ (V.; 226)….” 

See also my journal entry for the December 16-17 midnight, “Just Seventeen.”

Friday, December 13, 2002

Friday December 13, 2002

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 am

Dead Poets Society

Man’s spirit will be flesh-bound, when found at best,
But úncúmberèd: meadow-dówn is nót distréssed
For a ráinbow fóoting it nor hé for his bónes rísen.

—  The Caged Skylark,

Gerard Manley Hopkins,
Society of Jesus

In accordance with this sentiment,
this midnight in the garden of good and evil
is the occasion for a change of site music
to “Skylark,” by Hoagy Carmichael
(lyrics by Johnny Mercer).

Tuesday, December 10, 2002

Tuesday December 10, 2002

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 pm

Point of No Return

From Dr. Mac’s Cultural Calendar for December 10:

  • On this day in 1864, General William T. Sherman’s Union army reached Savannah and the 12-day siege began.  Sherman was able to present the city to President Lincoln as a “Christmas present.”

An album recorded in September 1961:

Songs in the above list:

September Song * When the World was Young
I’ll Be Seeing You * I’ll See You Again
Memories of You * There Will Never Be Another You
Somewhere Along the Way * A Million Dreams Ago
It’s a Blue World * I’ll Remember April
These Foolish Things

Not in the list, but in the album:

As Time Goes By

The Savannah Connection:

Augustus Saint-Gaudens
William Tecumseh Sherman,
1892-1903 (installed 1903)
Central Park, New York City

From

The Necessary Angel,

by Wallace Stevens
(New York: Knopf, 1951)
 (New York: Vintage Books, 1966):

“The theory of poetry, that is to say, the total of the theories of poetry, often seems to become in time a mystical theology or, more simply, a mystique. The reason for this must by now be clear. The reason is the same reason why the pictures in a museum of modern art often seem to become in time a mystical aesthetic, a prodigious search of appearance, as if to find a way of saying and of establishing that all things, whether below or above appearance, are one and that it is only through reality, in which they are reflected or, it may be, joined together, that we can reach them. Under such stress, reality changes from substance to subtlety….”

Part of a journal entry for
October 25, 2002:

Trinity

See… Bonaventure’s
Itinerarium Mentis in Deum
and

a graves list for Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah,
final resting place for Johnny Mercer and plot key
to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Point of No Return was Sinatra’s
last album for Capitol.

Note the strategic placement
of the Capitol Records logo
on the album cover.

Saturday, October 26, 2002

Saturday October 26, 2002

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am

Midnight in the Garden

From a Nina Simone Lyrics site:

Pack up all my cares and woe,
here I go, singing low,
Bye-bye Blackbird.
Where somebody waits for me,
sugar’s sweet, so is she,
Bye-bye Blackbird.
No one here can love and understand me.
Oh, what hard-luck stories they all hand me.
Make my bed and light the light,
I’ll arrive late tonight,
Blackbird, Bye-bye.



Nina Simone

For more on the eight-point star of Venus,
see “Bright Star,” my note of October 23.

Friday, October 25, 2002

Friday October 25, 2002

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:11 am

Trinity

The last two days were eventful on the obituary front.  See below for a reasonably holy trinity of lives: 

  • Richard Helms as the Father,
  • Derek Bell as the Son, and
  • Adolph Green as the Holy Spirit. 

See also Bonaventure’s
Itinerarium Mentis in Deum and

the graves list for Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah,
final resting place for Johnny Mercer and plot key
to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Saturday, September 14, 2002

Saturday September 14, 2002

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:03 am

God Is Her Co-Pilot

On the soundtrack album of "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,"  Clint Eastwood advised us to "eliminate the negative."  As a sequel to the extremely negative note below, written at midnight on the night of September 13-14, 2002, the following is my best attempt, on this very dark night of the soul, to eliminate the negative.  

Some of us are old enough to recall that the beloved Grace Kelly, Princess of Monaco, died on September 14, 1982 — exactly 20 years ago —  from injuries she suffered in a car accident the day before.  The following photo recalls happier days of driving the Riviera, in the 1955 film "To Catch a Thief."

This note's title, combined with the photo, suggests that I have a mystical vision of Cary Grant as God.  I can think of worse people to play God.  The best I can do tonight to eliminate the negative is transcribe  the remarks I made in a (paper) journal entry in 1997.  (By the way, I realize that ordinary people are just as important as movie stars, but the latter are more suitable for public discussion.)

In memoriam: Robert Mitchum and James Stewart 

Eternal Triangles (July 3, 1997)

Every civilization tells its own story about the relations between heaven and earth.  Some of the best stories — those of Lao Tsu, the Greek poets, and Buddha — are now almost 26 centuries old.  Some even older stories — those told by the Jews — have enabled our current civilization, led by Charlton Heston as God, to outlast Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.  However, recent claims of Absolute Truth for these stories (The Bible Code) are disturbing.  Perhaps it is time — at least for Robert Mitchum and James Stewart — to meet a kinder, gentler God.

I propose Cary Grant — specifically, as seen in "The Grass is Greener" (1960) with Mitchum and Deborah Kerr, and in "The Philadelphia Story" (1940) with Stewart and Katharine Hepburn.  If we imagine Grant as God, then these films reveal a very old, always entertaining, and sometimes enlightening version of the Trinity:  God and Man as rivals for the Holy Spirit — as played by Deborah, by Kate, and (in heaven) by Grace.  Such a spirit, at work in the real world, may have influenced two of this century's better Bibles:

  1. The Oxford Book of English Prose (1925, reprinted through 1958), and

  2. "LIFE — The 60th Anniversary Issue" (October 1996)

From (1), for Mitchum's memorial, Deborah might pick "The Basket of Roses" (pp. 1057-1060).  From (2), for Stewart's memorial, Kate might select the page of LIFE's covers for 1941 — and all that page implies.

Finally, Grace, in the Highest society (beyond Bibles) might recall the following telegraphic catechism:

Q. — How old Cary Grant?
A. — Old Cary Grant fine.  How you?

Friday, September 13, 2002

Friday September 13, 2002

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:24 pm

Meditation for Friday the 13th

The 1946 British film below (released as “Stairway to Heaven” in the U.S.) is one of my favorites.  I saw it as a child. Since costar Kim Hunter died this week (on 9/11), and since today is Friday the 13th, the following material seems relevant.

Kim Hunter in 1946

R.A.F pilot
and psychiatrist 

Alan McGlashan

Alan McGlashan has practiced as a psychiatrist in London for more than forty years.  He also served as a pilot for the R.A.F. (with MC and Croix de Guerre decorations). 

The doctor in “A Matter of Life and Death” addresses a heavenly court on behalf of his patient, R.A.F pilot David Niven:

In the film, David Niven is saved by mistake from a fated death and his doctor must argue to a heavenly court that he be allowed to live. 

In a similar situation, I would want Dr. Alan McGlashan, a real-life psychiatrist, on my side.  For an excerpt from one of my favorite books, McGlashan’s The Savage and Beautiful Country,

click here.

As Walker Percy has observed (see my Sept. 7 note, “The Boys from Uruguay”), a characteristic activity of human beings is what Percy called “symbol-mongering.”  In honor of today’s anniversary of the births of two R.A.F. fighter pilots,

Sir Peter Guy Wykeham-Barnes (b. 1915) and author

Roald Dahl (b. 1916),

here is one of the better symbols of the past century:

The circle is of course a universal symbol, and can be made to mean just about whatever one wants it to mean.  In keeping with Clint Eastwood’s advice, in the soundtrack album for “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” to “accentuate the positive,” here are some positive observations on a circle from the poet (and perhaps saint) Dante, who died on the night of September 13-14:

In the sun, Dante and Beatrice find themselves surrounded by a circle of souls famous for their wisdom on earth. They appear as splendid lights and precious jewels who dance and sing as they lovingly welcome two more into their company. Their love for God is kindled even more and grows as they find more individuals to love. Among the blessed souls are St. Thomas Aquinas and one of his intellectual “enemies”, Siger of Brabant, a brilliant philosopher at the University of Paris, some of whose teachings were condemned as heretical. Conflicts and divisions on earth are now forgotten and absorbed into a communal love song and dance “whose sweetness and harmony are unknown on earth and whose joy becomes one with eternity.”

Dante compares their dance and song to God’s bride on earth, the Church, when she answers the morning bells to rise from bed and “woo with matins song her Bridegroom’s love.” Some critics consider this passage the most “spiritually erotic” of all the one hundred cantos of the Comedy. It is the ending of Canto 10, verses 139-148.

— Fr. James J. Collins, “The Spiritual Journey with Dante V,” Priestly People October 1997

The above material on Dante is from the Servants of the Paraclete website.

For more on the Paraclete, see

The Left Hand of God.

See also the illustration in the note below.

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