One of the most beautiful, lyrical little books I've ever read. Each new page sunk me contentedly ever deeper into the couch. A real gem, well worth the time (only takes an hour). [On a personal note: it's hard to believe just how deeply comforting this archaic style of English is for me, with its hiiiighly-recognizable cadence and use of similes. Despite being a complete atheist, I can't ignore that an entire childhood of enforced, continual biblical study makes me feel somehow that anything written like this is from the mind and voice of God.]
"But as he descended the hill, a sadness came upon him, and he thought in his heart:
How shall I go in peace and without sorrow? Nay, not without a wound in the spirit shall I leave this city.
Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and long were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his pain and his aloneness without regret?
Too many fragments of the spirit have I scattered in these streets" (3-4)
"How often have you sailed in my dreams, and now you come in my awakening, which is my deeper dream.
Ready am I to go, and my eagerness with sails full set awaits the wind.
Only another breath will I breathe in this still air, only another loving look cast backward,
And then I shall stand among you, a seafarer among seafarers.
And you, vast sea, sleepless mother,
Who alone are peace and freedom to the river and the stream,
Only another winding will this stream make, only another murmur in this glade,
And then shall I come to you, a boundless drop to a boundless ocean." (5-6)
"[...] let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyeous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow." (16-17)
"You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.
For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life's procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.
When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.
Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?" (27)
"Build of your imaginings a bower in the wilderness ere you build a house within the city walls.
[...]
Would that I could gather your houses into my hand, and like a sower scatter them in forest and meadow.
Would the valleys were your streets, and the green paths your alleys, that you might seek one another through vineyards, and come with the fragrance of the earth in your garments." (34-35)
(1923. New York: Random House, pocket ed., 1962)
Friday, June 27, 2008
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Breathing the Fire by Kimberly Dozier
Incredible, lucid account of a reporter's torturous recovery after being nearly obliterated by a car bomb in Iraq during a fairly routine embed. This must have been big in the news a few years ago... she was with CBS, although I don't remember it at all. Her cameraman and soundman, only steps ahead of her, and the captain leading them around, all died there in the street. These horrible events happen all the time over there, but we're all so jaded by reading about car bombs and suicide attacks in the news to even care anymore. I read the blurbs and wince at the numbers and then click on a Batman review and immediately forget. terrible.
"I'd lost more than half my blood at the bomb scene, and it kept leaking out. The doctors pumped in 30 to 40 units -- that's more than one adult's worth. Between Farrar, Reed, and me, we'd literally bled the blood bank dry." (53)
"The jagged, burning chunks of shrapnel had done major damage to my quadriceps, the four major muscles that power my upper leg. So many muscles were shredded that by the time the dead tissue was painstakingly removed from the living, my broken femur bone was exposed. In later surgery at Bethesda Naval Hospital, the remaining muscle had to be rearranged to cover it. And then doctors could only hope the grafts they put on the massive burn, a foot and a half by 8 inches, would take. If they couldn't cover the femur again, they'd have to consider taking the leg off. [...]
In order for my muscles to heal and for those later grafts to take, the surgeons at Landstuhl knew they had to clean the area of the damaged flesh, dirt, and bacteria that the blast had blown in. Otherwise the area would contaminate any future grafts and slow or stop healing. So, according to my mom, every day at Landstuhl, surgeons would powerwash the dirt and dead, burned tissue from my legs. Picture strapping a patient to the operating table and turning a fire hose on her at full blast. It was Nancy's bandage change on overdrive. These "washouts" were so painful they had to be done under full anasthesia and each one counted as surgery. by the time I was discharged from the last hospital weeks later, the surgeons had lost count of how many procedures I'd undergone. The guesstimate was 'at least two dozen.'" (77-78)
(Des Moines: Meredith Books, 2008)
"I'd lost more than half my blood at the bomb scene, and it kept leaking out. The doctors pumped in 30 to 40 units -- that's more than one adult's worth. Between Farrar, Reed, and me, we'd literally bled the blood bank dry." (53)
"The jagged, burning chunks of shrapnel had done major damage to my quadriceps, the four major muscles that power my upper leg. So many muscles were shredded that by the time the dead tissue was painstakingly removed from the living, my broken femur bone was exposed. In later surgery at Bethesda Naval Hospital, the remaining muscle had to be rearranged to cover it. And then doctors could only hope the grafts they put on the massive burn, a foot and a half by 8 inches, would take. If they couldn't cover the femur again, they'd have to consider taking the leg off. [...]
In order for my muscles to heal and for those later grafts to take, the surgeons at Landstuhl knew they had to clean the area of the damaged flesh, dirt, and bacteria that the blast had blown in. Otherwise the area would contaminate any future grafts and slow or stop healing. So, according to my mom, every day at Landstuhl, surgeons would powerwash the dirt and dead, burned tissue from my legs. Picture strapping a patient to the operating table and turning a fire hose on her at full blast. It was Nancy's bandage change on overdrive. These "washouts" were so painful they had to be done under full anasthesia and each one counted as surgery. by the time I was discharged from the last hospital weeks later, the surgeons had lost count of how many procedures I'd undergone. The guesstimate was 'at least two dozen.'" (77-78)
(Des Moines: Meredith Books, 2008)
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History by Stephen Jay Gould
"Life is a copiously branching bush, continually pruned by the grim reaper of extinction, not a ladder of predictable progress." (35)
"Perhaps the grim reaper of anatomical designs is only Lady Luck in disguise. Or perhaps the actual reasons for survival do not support conventional ideas of cause as complexity, improvement, or anything moving at all humanward. Perhaps the grim reaper works during brief episodes of mass extinction, provoked by unpredictable environmental catastrophes (often triggered by impacts of extra-terrestrial bodies). Groups may prevail or die for reasons that bear no relationship to the Darwinian basis of success in normal times. Even if fishes hone their adaptations to peaks of aquatic perfection, they will all die if the ponds dry up. But grubby old Buster the Lungfish, former laughingstock of the piscine priesthood, may pull through -- and not because a bunion on his great-grandfather's fin warned his ancestors about an impending comet. Buster and his kind may prevail because a feature evolved long ago for a different use has fortuitously permitted survival during a sudden and unpredictable change in rules. And if we are Buster's legacy, and the result of a thousand other similarly happy accidents, how can we possibly view our mentality as inevitable, or even probable?" (48)
"Most of us are not naive enough to believe the old myth that scientists are paragons of unprejudiced objectivity, equally open to all possibilities, and reaching conclusions only by the weight of evidence and logic of argument. We understand that biases, preferences, social values, and psychological attitudes all play a strong role in the process of discovery. However, we should not be driven to the opposite extreme of complete cynicism -- the view that objective evidence plays no role, that perceptions of truth are entirely relative, and that scientific conclusions are just another form of aesthetic preference. Science, as actually practiced, is a complex dialogue between data and preconceptions." (244)
(New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1990)
"Perhaps the grim reaper of anatomical designs is only Lady Luck in disguise. Or perhaps the actual reasons for survival do not support conventional ideas of cause as complexity, improvement, or anything moving at all humanward. Perhaps the grim reaper works during brief episodes of mass extinction, provoked by unpredictable environmental catastrophes (often triggered by impacts of extra-terrestrial bodies). Groups may prevail or die for reasons that bear no relationship to the Darwinian basis of success in normal times. Even if fishes hone their adaptations to peaks of aquatic perfection, they will all die if the ponds dry up. But grubby old Buster the Lungfish, former laughingstock of the piscine priesthood, may pull through -- and not because a bunion on his great-grandfather's fin warned his ancestors about an impending comet. Buster and his kind may prevail because a feature evolved long ago for a different use has fortuitously permitted survival during a sudden and unpredictable change in rules. And if we are Buster's legacy, and the result of a thousand other similarly happy accidents, how can we possibly view our mentality as inevitable, or even probable?" (48)
"Most of us are not naive enough to believe the old myth that scientists are paragons of unprejudiced objectivity, equally open to all possibilities, and reaching conclusions only by the weight of evidence and logic of argument. We understand that biases, preferences, social values, and psychological attitudes all play a strong role in the process of discovery. However, we should not be driven to the opposite extreme of complete cynicism -- the view that objective evidence plays no role, that perceptions of truth are entirely relative, and that scientific conclusions are just another form of aesthetic preference. Science, as actually practiced, is a complex dialogue between data and preconceptions." (244)
(New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1990)
Monday, June 16, 2008
The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck
I really, reeeaaally enjoyed this book....
"We formed a procession down our path to Elm Street, then left to Porlock, where our church is, our old white-steepled church, stolen intact from Christopher Wren. And we were part of a growing stream, and every woman in passing had delight of other women's hats.
'I have designed an Easter hat,' I said. 'A simple, off-the-face crown of thorns in gold with real ruby droplets on the forehead.'
'Ethan!' said Mary sternly. 'Suppose someone should hear you.'
'No, I guess it couldn't be popular.'
'I think you're horrid,' Mary said, and so did I, worse than horrid." (105)
"There must be ritual preliminaries to a serious discussion or action, and the sharper the matter is, the longer and lighter must the singing be." (113)
"A strange and seeing time, the front steps of sleep." (255)
"[...] the sky is falling and a piece of it fell on my tail." (255)
(New York: Bantam Books, 1961)
"We formed a procession down our path to Elm Street, then left to Porlock, where our church is, our old white-steepled church, stolen intact from Christopher Wren. And we were part of a growing stream, and every woman in passing had delight of other women's hats.
'I have designed an Easter hat,' I said. 'A simple, off-the-face crown of thorns in gold with real ruby droplets on the forehead.'
'Ethan!' said Mary sternly. 'Suppose someone should hear you.'
'No, I guess it couldn't be popular.'
'I think you're horrid,' Mary said, and so did I, worse than horrid." (105)
"There must be ritual preliminaries to a serious discussion or action, and the sharper the matter is, the longer and lighter must the singing be." (113)
"A strange and seeing time, the front steps of sleep." (255)
"[...] the sky is falling and a piece of it fell on my tail." (255)
(New York: Bantam Books, 1961)
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