Log24

"Freshman Seminar Program Department Administrator Corinna S. Rohse
described the program’s courses, which allow students to study subjects
that vary from Sanskrit to the mathematical basis for chess, as
'jewel-like:  small and incredibly well-cut.' "

— The Harvard Crimson , Dec. 10, 2008

For remarks related to Sanskrit, chessboard structure, and "jewel-like" 
mathematics, see A Prince of Darkness (Log24, March 28, 2006).

See also Walsh Functions in this journal and …

Lecture notes on dyadic harmonic analysis
(Cuernavaca, 2000)

— Dr. Maria Cristina Pereyra

Compare and contrast these remarks of Pereyra with the following
remarks, apparently by the same Corinna S. Rohse quoted above.

* Location of the Harvard Freshman Seminar program in the 2008
article above. The building at 6 Prescott was moved there from 
5 Divinity Avenue in 1978. When the seminar program was started
in the fall of 1959, it was located in a house at 8 Prescott St. (In 
1958-1959 this was a freshman dorm, the home of Ted Kaczynski.)

From this journal on September 16, 2013 —

Also on September 16, 2013 —

* See that term in this journal.

… from the previous post. See also Spectre in this journal.

The New Yorker , issue dated Feb. 9, 2015 —

"After trying magic mushrooms in Cuernavaca, in 1960,
Leary conceived the Harvard Psilocybin Project, to study
the therapeutic potential of hallucinogens. His involvement
with LSD came a few years later."

Related viewing —

Seymour Lazar, Flamboyant Entertainment Lawyer, Dies at 88

The New York Times  this evening has an obituary for Seymour Lazar, 
"Seymour the Head in Supermoney , George Goodman’s 1972 account
of the global financial game, written under the pen name Adam Smith."

From that obituary —

"It was in Cuernavaca that Mr. Goodman, quite skeptical of the Lazar lore
he had heard so much of, met the man behind the myth. 'Seymour was
real,' he wrote…."

As is the Hungarian algorithm.

Mr. Lazar reportedly died on March 30. This journal on that date —

A rose on a Harvard University Press book cover (2014) —

A Log24 post's "lotus" (2004) —

A business mandorla (2016) —

See pato.jpg and Venn's Cuernavaca.

* A reference to the British publishing company
  in the previous post.

Ya la ronda llega aqui.

— Title of a 1975 film. The late Martin Poll (previous post)
was the executive producer.

See also "A Corpse Will Be Transported by Express."

Related material—

Monday in Cuernavaca—

… and in Cambridge—

* See the Latin version in this journal.

"He gazed out of the window hoping that somehow everything could make sense to him."

— "Passing in Silence," by Oliver Humpage

"You gotta be true to your code." —Sinatra

Exercise: Trace a path from the June 27 NY Lottery numbers
to the above two quotations.  Hint: See Cuernavaca and
Pilgrim's Progress  in TIME Magazine, May 3, 1948.

For some further background, click on the CBS quote above.
I still prefer, as I did in 1948, less  up-to-the-minute developments.

* The title refers to the phrase "the artist's signature."

"Next to the bookcase stands a wooden cabinet with 24 drawers that looks like something you might have seen in a library decades ago, or perhaps in an old apothecary. The drawers are marked with the names of her novels or characters in the novels and crammed with indexed notes.

She pulls open a drawer marked 'Lozen,' the name of a main female character in another historical western novel, 'The Ghost Warrior,' and reads a few of the index tabs: 'social relationships, puberty, death, quotes….'"

— From an article on Lucia St. Clair Robson in The Baltimore Sun  by Arthur Hirsch, dated 1:31 p.m. EDT April 30, 2011*

From this  journal later that same day —

Robson's most recent novel is Last Train from Cuernavaca .

"A corpse will be transported by express!"

— Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

* Update of 5:48 AM EDT May 3—
   The same article was also published with a different  dateline— April 28.
   Enthusiasts of synchronicity may lament the confusion, or they may
   turn to April 28 in this journal for a different  24-part invention.
   See also Art Wars, April 7, 2003 and White Horse .

Part I:    A search in this journal for Cuernavaca+garden
Part II:   This life can be very strange –Steely Dan, 1976
Part III:  Owsley Stanley Dies at 76

Continued from Friday the 13th—

(Click to enlarge.)

Related material—

Cover art by Barclay Shaw reprinted from an earlier (1984) edition

A question from Ivan Illich
(founder of CIDOC, the Center for Intercultural Documentation,
in Cuernavaca, Mexico)—

"Who can be served by bridges to nowhere?"

For more about nowhere, see Utopia. See also http://outis.blogspot.com.

The Jewel
in Venn's Lotus

See also a prequel to
  Ramanujan's Flowering Tree—

Flowering Judas.

* “Every city has its gates, which need not be of stone. Nor need soldiers be upon them or watchers before them. At first, when cities were jewels in a dark and mysterious world, they tended to be round and they had protective walls. To enter, one had to pass through gates, the reward for which was shelter from the overwhelming forests and seas, the merciless and taxing expanse of greens, whites, and blues–wild and free–that stopped at the city walls.

In time the ramparts became higher and the gates more massive, until they simply disappeared and were replaced by barriers, subtler than stone, that girded every city like a crown and held in its spirit.”

— Mark Helprin, Winter’s Tale

or, Deja Vu All Over Again

Top two obituaries in this morning's NY Times list–

Simons reportedly died on April 5,
Aubrey on April 6.

This journal on those dates–

April 5 —

April 6 —

See also Leary on Cuernavaca,
John O'Hara's fleeting reference
to Cuernavaca in Hope of Heaven,
and Cuernavaca in this journal.

Endgames:

Cuernavaca, Amalfi, Berlin

In the above screenshot of New York Times obituaries on the date of Brewster Beach’s death, Tim Russert seems to be looking at the obituary of Air Force Academy chapel architect Walter Netsch.

This suggests another chapel, more closely related to my own experience, in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Some background…

Walter Netsch in Oral History (pdf, 467 pp.):

“I also had a book that inspired me– this is 1947– called Communitas by Percival and Paul Goodman. Percival Goodman was the architect, and Paul Goodman was the writer and leftist. And this came out of the University of Chicago– part of the leftist bit of the University of Chicago….

I had sort of in the back of my mind, Communitas appeared from my subconscious of the new town out of town, and there were other people who knew of it….”

Log24, May 8, 2007:

Log24, Feb. 24, 2008:

Chapel, Cuernavaca, Mexico

“God As Trauma”
by Brewster Yale Beach:
“The problem of crucifixion is
  the beginning of individuation.”

“Si me de veras quieres,
deja me en paz.”

— Lucero Hernandez,
Cuernavaca, 1962

A more impersonal approach
to my own drunkard’s walk
(Cuernavaca, 1962, after
reading the above words):

Cognitive Blending
and the Two Cultures

An approach from the culture
(more precisely, the alternate
religion) of Scientism–
The Drunkard’s Walk:
How Randomness
Rules Our Lives—
is sketched in
Today’s Sermon:
The Holy Trinity vs.
The New York Times
(Sunday, June 8, 2008).

The Times illustrated its review
of The Drunkard’s Walk
with facetious drawings
by Jessica Hagy, who uses
Venn diagrams to make
cynical jokes.

A less cynical use of
a Venn diagram:

“No se puede vivir sin amar.”

— Malcolm Lowry,
Under the Volcano

(March 3, 2004)

Online New York Times today



“With a little effort,

— Opening sentence of
Martha Cooley’s The Archivist

“Frere Jacques, Cuernavaca,
ach du lieber August.”

— John O’Hara, Hope of Heaven, 1938

From May 15 through May 26, there is a women-only meeting on zeta functions at the  Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.  Today’s activities:

Sudden View

From John O’Hara’s Birthday:

“We stopped at the Trocadero and there was hardly anyone there.  We had Lanson 1926.  ‘Drink up, sweet.  You gotta go some.  How I love music.  Frère Jacques, Cuernavaca, ach du lieber August.  All languages.  A walking Berlitz.  Berlitz sounds like you with that champagne, my sweet, or how you’re gonna sound.'”

— John O’Hara, Hope of Heaven, Chapter 11, 1938

“And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.”

— Acts, Chapter 2, Verse 4

“Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a long the

PARIS,
1922-1939.”

— James Joyce, conclusion of Finnegans Wake

“Using illustrative material from religion, myth, and culture, he starts with the descent of the dove on Jesus and ends with the poetic ramblings of James Joyce.”

— Review of a biography of the Holy Spirit

Monica Potts in today’s New York Times on Sybille Bedford:

“Though her works were not always widely popular, they inspired a deeply fervent following of committed admirers, starting with her first published work, A Sudden View, in 1953. Later retitled A Visit to Don Otavio, it was an account of her journey through Mexico.”

… “I addressed him.  ‘Is Cuernavaca not below Mexico City?’
    ‘It is low.’
    ‘Then what is this?’  Another summit had sprung up above a curve.
    ‘At your orders, the Three Marias.’
    ‘What are the Three Marias?’
    ‘These.’
    Later, I learned from Terry that they were the three peaks by the La Cima Pass which is indeed one of the highest passes in the Republic; and still later from experience, that before running down to anywhere in this country one must first run up some six or seven thousand feet.  The descents are more alarming than the climbs.  We hurtled towards Cuernavaca down unparapeted slopes with the speed and angle, if not the precision, of a scenic railway– cacti flashed past like telegraph poles, the sun was brilliant, the air like laughing gas, below an enchanting valley, and the lack of brakes became part of a general allegro accelerando.”

— Sybille Bedford, A Sudden View, Counterpoint Press, Counterpoint edition (April 2003), page 77

“How continually, how startlingly, the landscape changed!  Now the fields were full of stones: there was a row of dead trees.  An abandoned plough, silhouetted against the sky, raised its arms to heaven in mute supplication; another planet, he reflected again, a strange planet where, if you looked a little further, beyond the Tres Marias, you would find every sort of landscape at once, the Cotswolds, Windermere, New Hampshire, the meadows of the Eure-et-Loire, even the grey dunes of Cheshire, even the Sahara, a planet upon which, in the twinkling of an eye, you could change climates, and, if you cared to think so, in the crossing of a highway, three civilizations; but beautiful, there was no denying its beauty, fatal or cleansing as it happened to be, the beauty of the Earthly Paradise itself.”

— Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 1st Perennial Classics edition (May 1, 2000), page 10

The Cinematic
Imagination,
or
“Frida” meets
“Under the Volcano”

A scene from “Frida”
and a scene from the
Day of the Dead festival,
Cuernavaca, 10/30/04

Related material:

For the Man in Black
(Log 24, 9/13/03)
and
For a Man in Black
(Log 24, 11/17/05).

CUERNAVACA, Mexico – Spanish singer Gloria Lasso, who made her name recording romantic ballads in Latin America and Paris, died in her sleep on Sunday at her home in Cuernavaca. She was 83.

“Si me de veras quieres,
deja me en paz.”

(See Shining Forth.)

“Perhaps people will revert to private social networks–ones they manage locally….

Perhaps the law of networks–the strength of a tie degrades by the square of the number of links–would become more apparent, and perhaps that would be a good thing.

I’m not sure how good that is as a business model, but it works as a social model.”

The beautiful, brilliant, and charming Esther Dyson seems to have suffered a temporary lapse in brilliance with the above remark on the strength of ties in social networks….

“the law of networks–the strength of a tie degrades by the square of the number of links….”

Here are some useful references encountered while fact-checking Ms. Dyson’s assertion about the “law of networks” —

Links on Graph Theory and Network Analysis

The Navigability of Strong Ties:
Small Worlds, Tie Strength and Network Topology (pdf)

Modeling Coleman’s Friendly Association Networks (pdf)

The Strength of Weak Ties:
A Network Theory Revisited (pdf)

Scientific Collaboration Networks, II (pdf)
(Deals specifically with tie-strength computation.) 

Dynamic Visualization of Social Networks

and, finally, a diagram of social networks in Shakespeare that conclusively demonstrates that there is no simple relationship between strength of ties and number of ties:

Cleopatra’s Social Ties (png)

Perhaps what Ms. Dyson had in mind was the following (courtesy of The Motley Fool):

“Metcalfe’s Law of Networks states that the value of a network grows by the square of the size of the network. Translated, this means that a network that is twice as large as another network will actually be at least four times as valuable. Why? Because four times as many interconnections are possible between participants in the larger network.

When you add a fourth person to a group of three, you don’t add just one more networked relationship. You add several. The new individual can network with all three of the existing persons, and vice versa. The Internet is no different. It became more and more valuable as the numbers of computers using it grew.”

For another perspective on this alleged law, from science fiction author Orson Scott Card, see The Group, a Log24 entry of Sept. 24, 2002.

Elsewhere, in a discussion of social-networking software:

“Esther Dyson starts with a request that people turn to their left and ask the person next to them, ‘Will you be my friend?’ The room erupts in chatter, but, of course, the problem is we don’t have enough information about one another to make a snap decision about that question.”

Obviously, ties resulting from such a request will be weak, rather than strong.  However, as study of the above network-theory links will reveal, weak ties can sometimes be more useful than strong ties.  An example:

Passing the Peace at Mass.

Compare and contrast with
Ms. Dyson’s request to turn and
ask the Mr. Rogers question,
“Will you be my friend?”

The best response to this question
that I know of was contained in
a good-bye letter from a girl named
Lucero in Cuernavaca
in the early 1960’s:

“Si me deveras quieres,
deja me en paz.”

(See Shining Forth.)

Sequel

From an entry of July 27, 2003…

Catholic Tastes, Part I:

Catholic Tastes, Part II:

A Catholic priest on “The Passion of the Christ”:

“By the time it’s over, the make-up artists give his skin the texture of spaghetti marinara.”

— The Rev. Richard A. Blake, S.J., professor of fine arts and co-director of the film studies program at Boston College, in America magazine, issue dated March 15, 2004.

Related material:

“I’m waiting for Mel’s sequel:

‘He’s back. Christ Almighty!
The Resurrection.
This time, it’s personal.’ “

— Bruce Feirstein in The New York Observer

An Association of Ideas

"The association is the idea." — Ian Lee

"One of my teachers told me I was a nihilist… I took it as a compliment."
— Susanna Kaysen in Girl, Interrupted

MIT biography of Carl Kaysen, Susanna Kaysen's father:

"His scholarly work has ranged widely in the areas where economics, sociology, politics and law overlap."

From Venn Diagram
by Alejandro Fuentes Penna and
Oscar de la Paz Arroyo,
ITESM Campus Cuernavaca,
Lomas de Cuernavaca,
Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico

"Ahí construyó Félix Candela la Capilla abierta (1959, junto con Guillermo Rosell y Manuel Larrosa)

que iba a ser un templo para todas las religiones, pero que no fue autorizada por las autoridades. Más adelante la Capilla habría de convertirse en restaurante, como el de Xochimilco construido en 1957, discoteca, bar y teatro. En el Casino de la Selva vivieron personajes famosos. Uno de ellos fue el escritor inglés Malcolm Lowry…."

— El Casino de la Selva,
   Octavio Rodríguez Araujo

"No se puede vivir sin amar."

— Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano
 

Dunne's Wake:

What, and Give Up Show Biz?

"Dying is easy. Comedy is hard."

— Saying attributed to Edmund Gwenn, star of "Miracle on 34th Street," and also attributed to "Noel Coward, David Garrick, William Holden, Edmund Kean, Marcel Marceau, Groucho Marx, and Oscar Wilde."

See also yesterday's entry on the Dark Lady.  For more on Santa and the Dark Lady, see my archive for Aug.-Sept. 2002.

"Drink up, sweet.  You gotta go some.  How I love music.  Frère Jacques, Cuernavaca, ach du lieber August.  All languages.  A walking Berlitz.  Berlitz sounds like you with that champagne, my sweet, or how you're gonna sound."

— Hope of Heaven, by John O'Hara,
"another acidic writer to whom he
[John Gregory Dunne]
was often compared"
(Adam Bernstein, Washington Post)

For some context for the Hope of Heaven quotation, see Immortal Diamond: O'Hara, Hopkins, and Joyce, or click on the adding machine in yesterday's entry.

For more on miracles and the afterlife, see my archive for September 2002.

Dream of Heaven

“Heaven is a state, a sort of
metaphysical state.”

— John O’Hara,
Hope of Heaven, 1938

“Frère Jacques, Cuernavaca,
ach du lieber August.”

— John O’Hara, Hope of Heaven 

Frère Jacques
is a
  “canon à quatre voix.”

For another, purely visual,
four-part canon, see the
owl-like picture

in the web page
Poetry’s Bones.

See, too, the Wallace Stevens poem
“The Owl in the Sarcophagus,”
and hear Stevie Nicks as the voice
of The Wizard Owl in a story titled
 Frère Jacques.

Into the Sunset

I just learned of Johnny’s Cash’s death.  On Google News, the headline was  Johnny Cash rides into sunset.  The source was the Bangkok Post.

“Don’t you know that
when you play at this level
there’s no ordinary venue.”

— One Night in Bangkok (midi)

No Ordinary Venue

“They are the horses of a dream.
 They are not what they seem.”

— The Hex Witch of Seldom, page 16

A Singer
7-Cycle

The Magnificent Seven:

CLICK HERE for 

“the adventures of filming this epic
on location in Cuernavaca, Mexico.”

“Words are events.”

— Walter J. Ong, Society of Jesus 

“…search for thirty-three and three…”
— The Black Queen in The Eight

Catholic Tastes

In memory of New York Times music critic Harold C. Schonberg, who died Saturday, July 26, 2003:

Nous Voici Dans La Ville – A Christmas song from 15th century France (midi by John Philip Dimick).

In memory of my own youth:

Formaggio Address Paseo del Conquistador # 144 Food Type Italian Dress Casual Tel 777-313-0584 Comment Chef Lorenzo Villagra is formally trained in Italian Cuisine. Great food and views of the valley of Cuernavaca.

In memory of love:

Volverán del amor en tus oídos

Las palabras ardientes a sonor;

Tu corazón de su profundo sueño

Tal vez despertará;

Pero mudo y absorto y de rodillas,

Como se adora a Dios ante su altar,

Como yo te he querido…desengáñate,

¡Así no te querrán!

— from “Rima LIII“
    by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
   (1836-1870)

Translation by Young Allison, 1924:

Burning words of love will come
Again full oft within thine ears to sound;
Perchance thy heart will even be aroused
From its sleep profound;

But mute and prostrate and absorbed,
As God is worshipped in His holy fane,
As I have loved thee…undeceive thyself:
Thou wilt not be thus loved again!

The Robert Lowell version of
the complete poem by Bécquer:

Will Not Come Back
(Volverán)

Dark swallows will doubtless come back killing
the injudicious nightflies with a clack of the beak:
but these that stopped full flight to see your beauty
and my good fortune… as if they knew our names–
they’ll not come back. The thick lemony honeysuckle,
climbing from the earthroot to your window,
will open more beautiful blossoms to the evening;
but these… like dewdrops, trembling, shining, falling,
the tears of day–they’ll not come back…
Some other love will sound his fireword for you
and wake your heart, perhaps, from its cool sleep;
but silent, absorbed, and on his knees,
as men adore God at the altar, as I love you–
don’t blind yourself, you’ll not be loved like that.

See, too, my entry for the feast day of
Saint Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer,
which happens to be December 22.

Poetic Justice:
The Peacock Throne

Yesterday was the death day of two proponents of Empire: George III (in 1820) and Robert Frost (in 1963).  Lord Byron argued that the King slipped through heaven's gate unobserved while a friend distracted St. Peter with bad poetry.  We may imagine, on this dark night of the soul, Frost performing a similar service.

Though poets of the traditional sort may still perform such services in Heaven, here on earth they have been superseded by writers of song lyrics.  An example, Roddy Frame (formerly of the group "Aztec Camera"), was born on yesterday's date in 1964.  A Frame lyric:

Transformed by some strange alchemy,*
You stand apart and point to me
And point to something I can't see….

— Back Door to Heaven         

Namely:

    The Back Door to Heaven    

For poetic purposes, we may think of surreptitious entry into Heaven as being conveniently accomplished through a portal like the above back door, which is that of a small hotel in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

This is not your average Motel 6 back door.  As a former New York Times correspondent has written,

"Over the years, the guest list has drawn the likes of Prince Philip and the Shah of Iran, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. But informality still reigns."

This small hotel (or its heavenly equivalent), whose gardens are inhabited by various exotic birds, including peacocks, may still be haunted by the late Shah, who apparently styled himself "King of Kings and Emperor of the Peacock Throne."  Of course, the ghost of the King of Kings, after entering the garden of Paradise, may not be able to resume his former human shape.  He might still, however, be among those greeted by his fellow Emperor, George III, with the famous words

"My Lords and Peacocks…"

*For more on alchemy and Cuernavaca, see
  my journal note "The Black Queen."

    From The New York Times, Wed., Jan. 1, 2003:

Richard Horner, 82,
Broadway Producer, Is Dead

Richard Horner, a Broadway theater owner and producer who won a Tony Award for the 1974 revival of Eugene O’Neill’s “Moon for the Misbegotten,” died on Saturday [December 28, 2002] at his home in Palm Springs, Calif. He was 82.

According to one source, the O’Neill revival opened on December 28, 1973 — the same date on which the life of one of its producers was later to close.

From a CurtainUp review:

The revival at the Morosco was dubbed by its company “The Resurrection Play” since Jason Robards undertook the part just after a near fatal car accident and its legendary director José Quintero had just given up drinking.

According to the Internet Broadway Database, this revival, or resurrection, took place officially not on December 28 — the date of Horner’s death — but, appropriately, a day later.

At any rate, O’Neill’s title, along with my weblog entry of December 28, 2002,

“On This Date,” featuring Kylie Minogue,

suggests the following mini-exhibit of artistic efforts:

Curtain Up! July 2000 issue of GQ: Australian pop star Kylie Minogue strikes a pose. The cover is a takeoff on an Athena tennis poster.
Under the Volcano: A painting based on Malcolm Lowry’s classic novel. Having played tennis, Dr. Vigil and M. Laruelle talk about the events a year earlier. The view is of Cuernavaca from the Casino de la Selva hotel. Painting by Julian Heaton Cooper.

For further details on Kylie, Mexico, tequila, and
Under the Volcano,
see my entry of November 5, 2002.

For today’s site music, click “Old Devil Moon” here.

Bright Star

From the website of Karey Lea Perkins:

“The truth is that man’s capacity for symbol-mongering in general and language in particular is…intimately part and parcel of his being human, of his perceiving and knowing, of his very consciousness…”

— Walker Percy, The Message in the Bottle, Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1975

Today’s New York Times story on Richard Helms, together with my reminiscences in the entry that follows it below, suggest the following possibility for symbol-mongering:

This comparison is suggested by the Spanish word “Lucero” (the name, which means “Bright Star,” of the girl in Cuernavaca mentioned two entries down) and by the following passage from Robert A. Heinlein‘s classic novel, Glory Road:

The C.I.A. star above is from that organization’s own site.  The star of Venus (alias Aster, alias Ishtar) is from Symbols.com, an excellent site that has the following variations on the Bright Star theme:

See also my notes The Still Point and the Wheel and Midsummer Eve’s Dream.  Both notes quote Robinson Jeffers:

“For the essence and the end
Of his labor is beauty…
one beauty, the rhythm of that Wheel,
and who can behold it is happy
and will praise it to the people.”

— Robinson Jeffers, “Point Pinos and Point Lobos,”
quoted at the end of The Cosmic Code,
by Heinz Pagels, Simon & Schuster, 1982

Place the eightfold star in a circle, and you have the Buddhist Wheel of Life:

Literary Landmarks

From Dr. Mac’s Cultural Calendar for Oct. 3:

“On this day in 1610, Ben Jonson’s funniest comedy The Alchemist was entered into the Stationer’s Register.  It involves a servant who when the masters are away sets up a necromantic shop, tricking all and everyone.”

From Literary Calendar for tomorrow, Oct. 4:

“1892 — Robert Lawson, the only author/illustrator to win both the Caldecott Award and the Newbery Award—both coveted awards in the United States for children’s literature, is born.”

As a child I was greatly influenced by Robert Lawson’s illustrations for the Godolphin abridgement of Pilgrim’s Progress.  Later I was to grow up partly in Cuernavaca, Mexico, an appropriate setting for The Valley of the Shadow of Death and other Bunyan/Lawson themes.  Still later, I encountered Malcolm Lowry’s great novel Under the Volcano, set in Cuernavaca.  Lowry’s novel begins with an epigraph from Bunyan.  For the connection with Ben Jonson, see Pete Hamill’s article “The Alchemist of Cuernavaca” in Art News magazine, April 2001, pages 134-137.   See also my journal note of April 4, 2001, The Black Queen.

The Shining of Lucero

From my journal note, “Shining Forth“:

The Spanish for “Bright Star” is “Lucero.”

The Eye of the Beholder:

When you stand in the dark and look at a star a hundred light years away, not only have the retarded light waves from the star been travelling for a hundred years toward your eyes, but also advanced waves from your eyes have reached a hundred years into the past to encourage the star to shine in your direction.

— John Cramer, “The Quantum Handshake“

From Broken Symmetries, by Paul Preuss, 1983:

He’d toyed with “psi” himself…. The reason he and so many other theoretical physicists were suckers for the stuff was easy to understand — for two-thirds of a century an enigma had rested at the heart of theoretical physics, a contradiction, a hard kernel of paradox….   

Peter [Slater] had never thirsted after “hidden variables” to explain what could not be pictured.  Mathematical relationships were enough to satisfy him, mere formal relationships which existed at all times, everywhere, at once.  It was a thin nectar, but he was convinced it was the nectar of the gods.

………………

Those so-called crazy psychics were too sane, that was their problem — they were too stubborn to admit that the universe was already more bizarre than anything they could imagine in their wildest dreams of wizardry. (Ch. 16)

From Secret Passages, by Paul Preuss, 1997:

Minakis caught up and walked beside him in silence, moving with easy strides over the bare ground, listening as Peter [Slater] spoke. “Delos One was ten years ago — quantum theory seemed as natural as water to me then; I could play in it without a care. If I’d had any sense of history, I would have recognized that I’d swallowed the Copenhagen interpretation whole.”

“Back then, you insisted that the quantum world is not a world at all,” Minakis prompted him. “No microworld, only mathematical descriptions.”

“Yes, I was adamant. Those who protested were naive — one has to be willing to tolerate ambiguity, even to be crazy.”

“Bohr’s words?”

“The party line. Of course Bohr did say, ‘It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature.’ Meaning that when we start to talk what sounds like philosophy, our colleagues should rip us to pieces.” Peter smiled. “They smell my blood already.”

………………  Peter glanced at Minakis. “Let’s say there are indications — I have personal indications — not convincing, perhaps, but suggestive, that the quantum world penetrates the classical world deeply.” He was silent for a moment, then waved his hand at the ruins. “The world of classical physics, I mean. I suppose I’ve come to realize that the world is more than a laboratory.”

“We are standing where Apollo was born,” Minakis said. “Leto squatted just there, holding fast to a palm tree, and after nine days of labor gave birth to the god of light and music….”

To Lucero, in memory of
1962 in Cuernavaca

From On Beauty, by Elaine Scarry,
Princeton University Press, 1999 —

“Homer sings of the beauty of particular things. Odysseus, washed up on shore, covered with brine, having nearly drowned, comes upon a human community and one person in particular, Nausicaa, whose beauty simply astonishes him. He has never anywhere seen a face so lovely; he has never anywhere seen any thing so lovely….

I have never laid eyes on anyone like you,
neither man nor woman…
I look at you and a sense of wonder takes me.

Wait, once I saw the like —
in Delos, beside Apollo’s altar —
the young slip of a palm-tree
springing into the light.”

From Secret Passages, by Paul Preuss, 1997:

“When we try to look inside atoms,” Peter said, “not only can we not see what’s going on, we cannot even construct a coherent picture of what’s going on.”

“If you will forgive me, Peter,” Minakis said, turning to the others. “He means that we can construct several pictures — that light and matter are waves, for example, or that light and matter are particles — but that all these pictures are inadequate. What’s left to us is the bare mathematics of quantum theory.”

…. “Whatever the really real world is like, my friend, it is not what you might imagine.”

………………

 

Talking physics, Peter tended to bluntness. “Tell me more about this real world you imagine but can’t describe.”

Minakis turned away from the view of the sunset. “Are you familiar with John Cramer’s transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics?”

“No I’m not.”

………………

“Read Cramer. I’ll give you his papers. Then we can talk.” 

 From John Cramer, “The Quantum Handshake“:

Advanced waves could perhaps, under the right circumstances, lead to “ansible-type” FTL communication favored by Le Guin and Card…. 

For more on Le Guin and Card, see my journal notes below.

For more on the meaning of “lucero,” see the Wallace Stevens poem “Martial Cadenza.”

Trifecta

Born today: Arthur Koestler,
former Communist and writer on parapsychology

From To Ride Pegasus, by Anne McCaffrey, 1973: 

“Mary-Molly luv, it’s going to be accomplished in steps, this establishment of the Talented in the scheme of things. Not society, mind you, for we’re the original nonconformists…. and Society will never permit us to integrate.  That’s okay!”  He consigned Society to insignificance with a flick of his fingers.  “The Talented form their own society and that’s as it should be: birds of a feather.  No, not birds.  Winged horses!  Ha!  Yes, indeed. Pegasus… the poetic winged horse of flights of fancy.  A bloody good symbol for us.  You’d see a lot from the back of a winged horse…”

“Yes, an airplane has blind spots.  Where would you put a saddle?”  Molly had her practical side.

He laughed and hugged her.  Henry’s frequent demonstrations of affection were a source of great delight to Molly, whose own strength was in tactile contacts. 

“Don’t know.  Lord, how would you bridle a winged horse?”

“With the heart?”

“Indubitably!”  The notion pleased him.  “Yes, with the heart and the head because Pegasus is too strong a steed to control or subdue by any ordinary method.” 

Born today:  Darryl F. Zanuck,
producer of “Viva Zapata!”

Director Eliza Kazan consults with scriptwriter John Steinbeck about the production of “Viva Zapata!” in Cuernavaca, Mexico:

When John woke, I asked him, “Isn’t the Syndicate of Film Technicians and Workers here Communist-dominated?”

Elia Kazan on Darryl Zanuck’s insistence that Zapata’s white horse be emphasized:

Darryl made only one suggestion that he was insistent on. He’d stolen it, no doubt, from an old Warner western, but he offered it as if it were pristine stuff. “Zapata must have a white horse,” he said, “and after they shoot him, we should show the horse running free in the mountains — get the idea? A great fade-out.” We got the idea, all right. Darryl was innocent about the symbol in his suggestion, but so enthusiastic about the emotion of it that he practically foamed at the mouth. John’s face was without expression. Actually, while I thought it was corny, the idea worked out well in the end. 

Born today: comedian Bob Newhart

Birthdate of film producer Darryl F. Zanuck

Among Zanuck’s films were “All about Eve” and “Viva Zapata!”

Bright Star

I do not have a photograph of Lucero Hernandez, the subject of my journal notes

Shining Forth and

Plato, Pegasus, and the Evening Star.

In keeping with Zanuck’s commandment that “The kid stays in the picture!” — The photo at left, of a very young actress, captures some of Lucero’s beauty.

Center for Global Education,
Augsburg College 

Semester-abroad Program in Mexico

“The program is based in Cuernavaca, a city known for its perennial springtime (70-80 degrees). Cuernavaca, the capital of the state of Morelos, is about 50 miles south of Mexico City. Both the city and the state are important in Mexican history: the palace of the conqueror Hernan Cortez borders the central plaza in Cuernavaca and Morelos is known as “the cradle of the Mexican revolution” of 1910 led by Emiliano Zapata, who was born in a small town near Cuernavaca. A city of more than one million, Cuernavaca is also known for its innovative grass-roots education programs, economic cooperatives, and base Christian communities inspired by liberation theology.”