Martinis

I like to have a martini,
Two at the very most.
After three I'm under the table,
After four I'm under my host.
..........Dorothy Parker

Martinis son como las tetas de una mujer
Una no es bastante
Tres son demasiado
Pero dos? -- es sufficiente!
..............Jose Espino

The mind is its own place, and in itself
it can make a heaven of hell,
or a hell of heaven.
-- John Milton

Quote courtesy of Basil of Canada

I have begun Don Quixote: but first:

From Michael Blowhard's Blog:

It's OK not to get some great art. This is art, after all, not science or history, and doin' the art thing is as much about exploring your own responses as it is about exploring the world.

I had a few subpoints in mind too: 1) You don't have to love everything you're told is great, 2) You don't have to claim greatness for everything you love, and 3) You don't have to dispute the greatness of the works and artists you dislike. Explore a lot of great art, give yourself the experience of it, have whatever response you have to it -- and then let it all go. What does it matter, really, whether you agree with the so-called experts? (I can get vexed when I see people try-try-trying, oh so very hard, to "appreciate" a work in exactly the way they've been told to. Why do they strain with such determination to have a particular great experience? Why not have the experience they're having instead, whatever it is?) It matters only that you give the work a try and take note of what the experience was like for you. But don't be such a self-pleasing fool that you avoid what's been deemed to be great. That's crazy too. Hey, it's cool and fun to challenge yourself.

Anyway, the rules of this game:



You aren't disputing the greatness of the artist or the artwork.

You can see the point of the work or the artist, and you understand what's there to be gotten.

You understand the greatness of it too -- the range of its influence, what other artists have taken from it, etc. It's impressive, and you're impressed.

And you've given the work or the artist a decent and earnest try.

But you've found that when you look at it, or you listen to it, or you read it -- the magic evaporates.

To kick things off, here's a modest Michael Blowhard "It ain't happenin' for me" list: Henry James. Dostoevsky. "Citizen Kane." Bob Dylan. "The Waste Land." Euripides. Mahler. Miles Davis.

Perfectly content that all these artists and artworks are deemed great. I got no problem with that at all. They just don't -- alas -- do a thing for me.

(Between you and me, I'm excluding much 20th century art and architecture because I'm betting that the 20th century's "greatness" list is going to be revised in the fairly near future. I'd bet, for example, that in 25 years Faulkner and Joyce -- both of whom I generally like -- will be largely forgotten. And don't get me started about "great" modernist architecture.)

What indisputably great art do you blank out on? Eager to hear from visitors too, of course.

Best,

Michael

I don't believe in studying something because I am told that something is important--I believe in studying that which has "caught" me. Joseph Campbell.

recrudescent discontent

ONE ART


The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.


--- Elizabeth Bishop, 1976.

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Export Free Traders mek

Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same....Oscar Wilde, of course

Universal Draft --Selective Service


As you know the government is looking for volunteers for the draft board. I am thinking about volunteering and have listed the following pros and cons.

Con
Assists the government in an unholy endeavor.

Pro
Help to assure that the conscription not be limited to a single class. Making the selection certain of white, middle-class youth.

Preventing the escape of service by the children of the wealthy and powerful.

Making sure that all citizens be included and enrolled along side the white underclass and other classes such as blue-collar, Latinos, patriotic, and African-Americans, and other minorities thus ensuring a democratic and better educated armed force.

Help prevent a Junker class from evolving by assuring the cross-class, democratic selection of members of the armed forces.

Ensuring that in the future fewer members of Congress or the executive would be able to vote for war without having actually served themselves.


Your comments are solicited.

Gratwicker@aol.com


Golden Mean = 1.618

This morning our bid on a new apartment was accepted.

Work while it is day, for the night cometh when no man can work.

Choose between the exercise of power and the need to be understood.

Dear S:

A quick, from the hip reply:

Many writers kill themselves without being a part of any oppressed minority. I give you Ernest Hemingway, for one.

I read Mrs. Heilbron's obituary in the Times and was impressed by her life. I don't know why she felt it necessary to kill herself. Was she sick, or was she afflicted by writer's block? Did she feel that she had written all she could write and that there were no more words left in her pen? Had someone left her alone after a long term relationship?

My Dad had a friend, Murray Getz, who was retired from the Searl Pharmaceutical Company where he had been Sales Manager. He was in good health, and married to a good looking woman with a very sensual deep voice. He was tall, handsome, and apparently very strong. Dad said his only failing was that he sometimes drew to make inside straights.

Perhaps the loss of his job, or his wife's very deep voice drove him to the edge of the subway platform. But it wasn't being a member of an oppressed minority, and it wasn't because the Dodgers moved to California.

He leaped in front of a Number 5 train at the Jay Street Station in Downtown Brooklyn.

Several years I read a book called "Suicide" by A. Alvarez, an English critic. Although the book was over 200 pages he came to no conclusions regarding motives for suicide.

I shall order Ms Heilbron's book, and am ready to enter into any discussion that you may lead.

Note to a group of friends from SS: My first response is above.

Three weeks ago Carolyn Heilbron a women I had met on a couple of informal
occasions killed herself. She was in her 70's not ill or obviously effected by
major depression. She was an academic and retired as a professor of Lit
at Columbia University. She wrote books on literary subjects with a feminist
view point as well as detective novels under the pseudonym of Amanda Cross

I picked up a copy of her book "Writing a Women's Life" and I have been struck
with the fact that even though I have tried to understand the oppression of
women in our world that I still need education and enlightenment. This I feel
is a need that you all share.
I suggest we read this short(140)page book and discuss among ourselves and
maybe others. Sylvia Plath, Virginia wolf?

ss

The Wedding Ring

As you may know a time came a few years ago ago, when Maria asked that I wear a ring to symbolize ...

My father never wore a ring; I used one, hastily purchased on Greenwich Street, at the ceremony that tied us together in June of 1963, in Riverside Church, the Reverend Pablo Colon, presiding. What happened to that ring I cannot tell. It is gone for a long time, many years, perhaps stolen by a burglar at our home in Great Neck. Or lost, forgotten on a sink somewhere. I don't know. At the time I did not feel comfortable wearing it, and never replaced it.


Many years later, Maria asked that I wear one, just after our reconciliation feeling somewhat under pressure, and guilty too, I agreed, and immediately went to find one. I tried a few on, but I couldn't bring myself to go through with a purchase. So a year has elapsed, perhaps more.

A few days ago I visited a few nearby jewelry stores; my finger was measured -- ring size 11 1/2. A few rings were tried on, none suited me, most were too wide, one too narrow, finally it seemed that whenever I liked one the store would fail to have in stock a size 11 1/2

I tried a few pawnshops, but not one had a suitable ring, though the thought crossed my mind that in a pawn shop each ring must have had a more interesting story to tell than any new one that I might buy.

So this morning, once again, I went ring-hunting and found what I sought. A size 11 ½ of medium width, 18K.

And I wear it now -- as I type.

I wanted to surprise Maria by wearing the ring without telling her that I had purchased it. As I placed it on my finger, the salesman smiled and asked whether my haste to wear it outside indicated a shotgun wedding of some kind, but I explained to him that I had been married for forty years and that the purchase (and my wearing) of the ring was a present for my wife.

He suggested that buying her a present would be more appropriate. Well, I had no time to explain my convoluted thinking so I left the store, the ring on my finger and burning into it.

I walked away, finger ringed, now searching for Maria.

She called me on my cellphone and we agreed to meet at another store in the Mall. We met and I waited for Maria to notice the ring.

At first she failed to notice it, as I had purchased a silken robe for her from VictoriaÂ’s Secret, and she was busy looking at the robe. My secret was betrayed by a bulge in my pocket where I had placed the ring box. She saw and asked what was in my pocket. -- Still not seeing what was on my finger.

"My cell phone," I lied. She detected the lie quickly as I had the cellphone in my hand.

"Let me see it," she demanded. Sheepishly I pulled the box out and she saw the Tiffany box.

"Look, I bought a ring," I announced.

She complained that I didn't bring her with me when I bought it. It was too small. Of course I bought in Tiffany's so it had to cost too much.

I wanted to surprise her and I thought that she would be very happy when she saw the ring. Well, no good deed goes unpunished.

Back from NYC and a job interview. Let's cross our fingers.

Reading The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll. Alvaro Mutis. A Columbian now living in Mexico. Friend of Carlos Fuentes and about his age.

I can see that this is an important novel and I shall be reporting to you about it shortly.

.
.
.Too often social reform is conflated with socialism.

Liberalism is not socialism;

progress does not mean revolution.

Take note republican demagogues.

October 16, 2003

Posted by Micha Ghertner

Marilyn vos Savant, holds the world record for "highest recorded IQ," ,


What I am interested in is Marylyn Savant's name. Imagine, she is the world's smartest person (or has the highest recorded IQ) and is named "Savant."

Unexplainable to me.

Freedom of choice... unless you're a doctor.

I am not "pro-choice" but what follows is very suspect.

Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, and NARAL all oppose a bill permitting doctors and hospitals to refrain from performing abortions.

Apparently, Alaska forbids doctors/hospitals from abstaining from abortion for conscience reasons. How on earth do they enforce this? A better question is directed to the rank and file pro-choicers out there: how do your consciences allow this? How do you still support NARAL, Planned Parenthood, NOW, etc. when they are:


against parental notification for minors wishing abortion

against outlawing partial birth abortion

in favor of forcing doctors who believe abortion is reprehensible to perform them

against regulations of abortion that are mandated for procedures that are much, much safer.

I saw Pygmalion (1938) on television the other day. I discovered that Rex Harrison stole (in the sense that actors steal) much of Professor Higgins from Leslie Howard.

Shaw's socialism very apparent in the dialog. Better than My Fair Lady--which ain't bad either...