Paintings I like
I use an app on my phone called DailyArt, which shows me one new painting per day. These are some of the ones I've found pretty or meaningful over the years. They're not my ultimate ranking of favorite paintings. Just my favorites of what serendipity has thrown my way.
Other writing
The Structure — A story about loss of control.
Sites I like
The Infinite Conversation — An AI-generated never-ending dialogue between Werner Herzog and Slavoj Zizek.
The Library of Babel — Every possible page of 3,200 characters. Everything that has ever been or could ever be written is in here somewhere.
Radio Garden — Listen to live radio stations anywhere in the world.
Words I like
Readings
- Fernando Pessoa (as Álvaro de Campos), La Tabacaria (español · English)
- Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones
- Rainer Maria Rilke, The Ninth Elegy
Quotes
— Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's CradleGod made mud.
God got lonesome.
So God said to some of the mud, "Sit up!"
"See all I've made," said God, "the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars."
And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.
Lucky me, lucky mud.
I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.
Nice going, God.
Nobody but you could have done it, God! I certainly couldn't have.
I feel very unimportant compared to You.
The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and look around.
I got so much, and most mud got so little.
Thank you for the honor!
Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep.
What memories for mud to have!
What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!
I loved everything I saw!
Good night. I will go to heaven now. I can hardly wait...
— Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-FiveIt was a movie about American bombers in World War II and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this: American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.
The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans though and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.
When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Ninth ElegyEarth, loved one,
I will. Believe me, you don't need any more
of your springtimes to win me: one
is already more than my blood can take.
For as long as I can remember, I've been yours
completely.
— Jorge Luis Borges, El RemordimientoEspañol
He cometido el peor de los pecados
que un hombre puede cometer.
No he sido feliz. Que los glaciares del olvido
me arrastren y me pierdan, despiadados.
Mis padres me engendraron para el juego
arriesgado y hermoso de la vida,
para la tierra, el agua, el aire, el fuego.
Los defraudé. No fui feliz. Cumplida
no fue su joven voluntad. Mi mente
se aplicó a las simétricas porfías
del arte, que entreteje naderías.
Me legaron valor. No fui valiente.
No me abandona. Siempre está a mi lado
la sombra de haber sido un desdichado.English
I have committed the worst of sins
One can commit. I have not been
Happy. Let the glaciers of oblivion
Take and engulf me, mercilessly.
My parents bore me for the risky
And the beautiful game of life,
For earth, water, air and fire.
I failed them, I was not happy.
Their youthful hope for me unfulfilled.
I applied my mind to the symmetric
Arguments of art, its web of trivia.
They willed me bravery. I was not brave.
It never leaves me. Always at my side,
That shadow of a melancholy man.
— Joe Carlsmith, On the Abolition of ManNature herself is not, actually, a Mother-to-be-trusted. She doesn't care if you die, or suffer. You shouldn't try to rest in her arms. And neither should you give her the future to carry.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of EarthseaYou thought, as a boy, that a mage is one who can do anything. So I thought, once. So did we all. And the truth is that as a man's real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do.