A Minute Meditation

We are most likely to get angry and excited in our opposition to some idea when we ourselves are not quite certain of our own position, and are inwardly tempted to take the other side. 

-- Thomas Mann --

    Buddenbrooks


And it puzzle me to learn
That tho' a man may be in doubt of what he knows,
Very quickly he will fight. . .
He'll fight to prove that what he does not know is so!


"A Puzzlement"
Lyrics from the musical, The King and I



Obviously wrong, right?   For everybody knows that those who fight the hardest and shout the loudest have no doubts whatsoever . . . for they never give any sign that they might be wrong.   And those who admit that they have some questions or even doubts are the weakest in their faith.  It's obvious, isn't it?

A Minute Meditation

 Today is the birthday of Thomas Mann, the author of one of my top ten favorite novels:  The Magic Mountain.  

 

 

"Music awakens time, awakens us to our finest enjoyment of time."

-- Thomas Mann --

The Magic Mountain

 

 

I would add this: Music is the Voice of Time.  

 

 

Abraham Lincoln: a quotation

Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man, this race and that race and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal.

Abraham Lincoln 1858


I wonder what he would think today after reading the headlines.

Eric Hoffer: a quotation

No. 2

There is something unhuman about perfection. The performance of the expert strikes us as instinctual or mechanical. It is a paradox that, although the striving to master a skill is supremely human, the total mastery of a skill approaches the nonhuman. They who would make man perfect end up by dehumanizing him.

-- Eric Hoffer --
from Reflections on the Human Condition


Do perfect performances strike one as nonhuman? I remember reading a review by a music critic in the BBC Music Magazine. He criticized a CD by the The Tallis Scholars (a choral ensemble specializing in liturgical music led by Peter Philips) for being too perfect and inhuman and, therefore, he could only rate them a 4 on a 5 point scale.

I found that to be strange.

Something to think about

The native vision, the gift of seeing truly,
with wonder and delight into the natural world,
is informed by a certain attitude of reverence and
respect. It is a matter of extrasensory as well as
sensory perception. In addition to the eye, it
involves the intelligence, the instinct, and the
imagination. It is the perception not only of
objects and forms but also of essences and ideals.

N. Scott Momaday
Kiowa

What good are books?

Books delight us when prosperity smiles upon us; they comfort us inseparably when stormy fortune frowns on us. They lend validity to human compacts, and no serious judgments are propounded without their help. Arts and sciences, all the advantages of which no mind can enumerate, consist in books. How highly must we estimate the wondrous power of books, since through them we survey the utmost bounds of the world and time, and contemplate the things that are as well as those that are not, as it were in the mirror of eternity. In books we climb mountains and scan the deepest gulfs of the abyss; in books we behold the finny tribes that may not exist outside of their native waters, distinguish the properties of streams and springs and of various lands; from books we dig out gems and metals and the materials of every ,,kind of mineral, and learn the virtues of herbs and trees and plants, and survey at will the wholy progeny of Neptune, Ceres, and Pluto.

Books are masters who instruct us without words of anger, without bread or money. If you approach them they are not asleep. If you seek them, they do not hide, if you blunder they do not scold, if you are ignorant, they do not laugh at you.

-- Richard de Bury --


Or--

There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry --
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll --
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears the Human soul.

-- Emily Dickinson --







I wonder if in 2050 AD, someone will sit down and write: "Kindles delight us when prosperity smiles upon us; they comfort us inseparably when stormy fortune frowns upon us . . ."

Or

"There is no Frigate like a Kindle . . ."

Something to think about

Abraham Lincoln's Annual Message to Congress: 1862

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.


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