Theresa of Avila on the Meaning of Life

Handwriting Credit: Greig Roselli

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From the Womb to the Tomb

Joseph Campbell, Hero With a  Thousand Faces (1949), page 8

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Poem: Thrasymachus Blushing

thrasymachus blushing
blushing belies betrayal
betrayal of the body 
the body belied

so says socrates
not blushing
but catching thrasymachus in a blush

a crucial catch of the passage
says the professor
a critical juncture blushing
is

for in it
socrates 
calls thrasymachus out

for is it not true
that one cannot
forfeit an argument?
even if one knows forfeiting is the right thing to do
our body forfeits for us
turning rouge
in a crowd of philosophers
vying for truth

to get the answer wrong is an admission of failure
of not getting it

and we want to get it

so we plow on regardless
but our body -
it sees our flaw
and quickens -
blood flows more fully 
and all can see our less than comfortable
feeling of resting with a certain unjustified truth

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Greig Roselli ® 2012

Repurposing: Alice in Wonderland Book Clock

This nifty book clock clocks at fifty bucks at the Brooklyn holiday bazaar. Too bad I cannot afford it.

www.bugcicle.com 

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Quote: Kobo Abé On the Value of Work

The only way to go beyond work is through work. It is not that work itself is valuable; we surmount work by work. The real value of work lies in the strength of self-denial.

Kobo Abé, The Woman in the Dunes (1964)
Image credit:  Greig Roselli
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Bathers Caught in Hyde Park, London

The Serpentine, Hyde Park, London metropolitan policewoman chases naughty bathers circa Pre-WWI London.

Someone on Flickr posted more about this image here.

New Yorker Cartoon: "Fear not my princess ..."

Gahan Wilson, "Fear not my princess ..." Published in the New Yorker, September 23, 2002

"Fear Not, My Princess"

     I like cartoons like the one presented in this re-post of a New Yorker cartoon. A one frame, black and white cartoon drawing. The precursor to the Instagram post — just one frame to capture what you want to say. The picture ought to grab the reader's attention, and the caption has to be both pithy and smart and tie the image to a theme. In the above cartoon drawing by Gahan Wilson, what appears to be a night with a shield walks along a beach with maiden a crown. A discarded coke can is wedged in the center, and it is evident that we are looking at a beach scene.

The Image's Gag Effect

     The gag effect comes when the reader realizes that this is a fantasy scene. On the surface, it's an ordinary beach, but it's a microcosm of that beach wherein the beachgoers have all gone home for the season, sent packing to their cars (hence the "parking" sign in the upper lefthand corner of the drawing. What's going on here? I feel a sense of nostalgia looking at this drawing, of days spent on the beach in Pensacola, Flordia as a kid, exploring the grit of sand on my toes and making sandcastles. The caption is funny because it alludes to the idea of stowing away to the beach and getting lost in the fantasy of the moment. But what we have here is a miniature of a knight and a princess, the vestige of an imagination gone away (until next Summer). And the knight tells the princess, "fear not" and comforts her that soon a child will return to build them a "castle in the sand." How sad! I remember making sandcastles only to watch them destroyed by the incoming tide.

. . . With a Dash of Whimsy 

     And here the artist had made an image of that fleeting feel of Summer moment but added a dash of whimsy to it by imagining who might be living in that castle of sand how they would feel when it was washed away.

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