Post title

Books, maps, ways out, enigmas, the enigma of capital buried. The unread, the unsaid. A clearing, a  grove, a patch of land hidden from the world. Old Hazlitt, a memento from Kyoto, the blurring of the old and the new. Leonardo, commodified, down to the mystique. Dollar ink to write a book, shades to protect your eyes from the excessive light; headphones to keep the world of sound out. Gelpi's beautiful book on Denise. Jonas, quiet for the moment. The tree of knowledge, the tree...

"If you continue to work and to absorb beauty in the world about you, you find that age does not necessarily mean getting old."

The opening gambit from Casal's book, Joys and Sorrow. Isn't that another Mir? why is 'gambit' a tripping up? In the beginning must we always fall? For who, what? First base.

The old maps were more accurate and so were thought to be less accurate. Abstraction and the clearing (Scott's Seeing Like a State). This distancing, in order to see more clearly. Here we are, post title, with nothing to say...

~~~

"For the first time ever, images of art have become ephemeral, ubiquitous, insubstantial, available, valueless, free".
---John Berger.

Are there any other kinds of freedom?, Brando asked.

~~~

There is something a lot more enjoyable in writing that comes from personal experience, from having lived well-with an open hand a free heart-in the world. The first lines of Casal's book suggests just this quality; others include: Peter Brook, Thomas Merton. The writing is not about ideas of knowledge per se (if there ever is a per se), but the simple expression of forms (of words, music, images) that have been lived through...an incarnation of a truth in the body's gestures: the wave of a hand, a wise smile, a restrained gaze, the resigned shrug of the shoulders, a laughter that doesn't mock, and a thousand other manifestations or possibilities.

Why do you struggle to think of female writers in the same way, or do you? Carol Shields comes across as wise and you'd expect any biographical work to show that. You're very keen to read the new biography of Penelope Fitzgerald since she, too,  appears to have had a wise head and heart. Then there's the more enigmatic Stella Bowen (who you've only heard of via J.B.). No, this isn't a gender thing. If there is a distinction then it is about abstraction and theory on the one hand and a worldly 'philosophy' on the other. F. Rosenzweig, again.