'In a few days, we will have a new anniversary to celebrate or mourn. The bombing of Baghdad ten years ago this week marked the beginnings of another senseless American war fought for reasons that turned out not to exist, driven by wrongheaded, cockeyed, and manipulated intelligence.'
---Seymour H., The New Yorker.
'There is a sort of elation about the sunlight on the upper part of the house.'
---Edward Hopper.
The university has closed for the Spring break and it's as if it had returned to its original and natural state: silence, books, birds chirping on the trees outside the library, concentration, conversations full of mirth and easy-goingness; recognition, familiarity, family, the striving ego quelled, between the acts, melancholy put to one side. How to wear this superficiality naturally and not resent it, that is the trick. Those Greeks were profound out of superficiality.
From a distance you see a row of white houses, the morning light casting deep angular shadows on their facades, huge squares and rectangles competing with one another for space. The light makes them appear more distant than they really are. Under a certain light, and from a certain distance, I guess everything seems timeless, or finds some kind of redemption. In time, I think we will recognize war for what it is: just another blotch on the already stained record of humanity's dubious claim to be civilized. No, better to focus our attention on the upper part of the house, for God knows what darkness lurks in the basement...
~~~
---Seymour H., The New Yorker.
'There is a sort of elation about the sunlight on the upper part of the house.'
---Edward Hopper.
The university has closed for the Spring break and it's as if it had returned to its original and natural state: silence, books, birds chirping on the trees outside the library, concentration, conversations full of mirth and easy-goingness; recognition, familiarity, family, the striving ego quelled, between the acts, melancholy put to one side. How to wear this superficiality naturally and not resent it, that is the trick. Those Greeks were profound out of superficiality.
From a distance you see a row of white houses, the morning light casting deep angular shadows on their facades, huge squares and rectangles competing with one another for space. The light makes them appear more distant than they really are. Under a certain light, and from a certain distance, I guess everything seems timeless, or finds some kind of redemption. In time, I think we will recognize war for what it is: just another blotch on the already stained record of humanity's dubious claim to be civilized. No, better to focus our attention on the upper part of the house, for God knows what darkness lurks in the basement...
~~~
2 comments:
"Those Greeks were profound out of superficiality."
this would work too: "those Greeks were superficial out of profundity"
Ha! Yes, of course. Thanks, f. :-)
Memory ain't what it used to be, not that I remember it being much better.
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