A Quote for today

A question driven life:

"Know something about something."

Some people center their lives around money or status or community or service to God, but this seems to be a learning-centered life, where little bits of practical knowledge are the daily currency, where the main vocation is to be preoccupied with some exciting little project or maybe a dozen.

Some people specialize, and certainly the modern economy encourages that. But there are still people, even if only out in the African wilderness, with a wandering curiosity, alighting on every interesting part of their environment.

The late Richard Holbrooke used to give the essential piece of advice for a question-driven life: Know something about something. Don’t just present your wonderful self to the world. Constantly amass knowledge and offer it around.

Venice Biennale--3 Pavilions and Their Installations

The Venice Biennale is held every 2 years in odd-numbered years. Countries from all over the world are allowed to place art or an installation in their own pavilions--in some cases, large rooms. Here are 3 current installations.

From a movie review: "The Tree of Life"

In the film, Jessica Chastain and Brad Pitt play roles as parents in a family dealing with apparently ordinary things. The reviewer, Mick LaSalle, wrote:
.
- [Director] Malick shows you the world that you know, but he shows it in such a fever that you see it, not differently, but completely. It's a vision so alive to the mystery in everything that the simple depiction of a man walking into an office building feels like a feast of limitless possibility and geometric variety.

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At its most basic, "The Tree of Life" vividly replicates, in cinematic terms, the way we remember. There are general memories, moods and sensations, and then there are incidents and bits of conversation that are recalled with absolute present-tense lucidity. And so the incidents of voice-over are interspersed with straightforward scenes showing this 1950s family. Malick is trying to give us life as it is consciously experienced, the unceasing inner monologue and its interplay with the outside environment, the thoughts of the past mixing with the suspended and yet always available present.

The ambition behind such an attempt is enormous, and Malick's success is complete. But he doesn't stop there. In "The Tree of Life" he doesn't only want to show what life and consciousness feel like. He wants to capture the nature of life - what life is. To this end, he films waterfalls and mountains, gives us long minutes of churning, multi-colored ooze floating in space, and even includes a brief dinosaur interlude.

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When he stays within the multiple minds of his various characters, Malick is working here at the level of genius. His hand-held camera hovers with a sense of impending revelation. The beauty is beyond description. But when he ventures into explorations of the universe and its origins, the work becomes general and less interesting, liked warmed-over Kubrick.

Still, there is little doubt that "The Tree of Life" will stand as the cinematic achievement of the year.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/06/02/DDU91JNN0T.DTL#ixzz1OQpi8rJk

A New Photograph

This is a picture of a young woman from Kansas whose son would eventually became the President of the United States. [from New York Times Magazine cover]

















Stanley Ann Dunham at Borobudur Indonesia in the early 1970s.

Courage: An Example

". . . so I've seen a lot of songs and recitals and moments of silence 'to honor our men and women in uniform' who are sometimes said to be 'guarding America's freedom.' I too support our troops, as they say, a lot of whom are in some tactically useful hellhole because of social or economic pressures not of their own making."
. But with all of these events celebrating our men and women in uniform, maybe we could have a few---10 percent, say; I'm not asking for much--celebrating other Americans. For instance, gay men and women in uniform who, at some risk to their careers, are continuing to serve because they believe in the mission, even if their country does not believe in them.
. That is an act of daily courage, and I think they deserve a flyover or two; maybe even a singing of "God Bless America" . . . Not going to happen, I know.
. Anyway, hooray, gay people and this one's for you."
- -from the SF Chronicle columnist, Jon Carroll on Wednesday November 3, 2010.

Pierce The Veil

. Language in fiction is made up of equal parts meaning and music. The sentences should have rhythm and cadence, they should engage and delight the inner ear. Most readers, of course, wouldn't be able to tell you that they respond to those . . . words because they are soothing and symmetrical, but most readers register the fact unconsciously. You could probably say that meaning is the force we employ, and music is the seduction.
. Here's a secret. Many novelists, if they are pressed and if they are being honest , will admit that the finished book is a rather rough translation of the book they'd intended to write. It's one of the heartbreaks of writing fiction. You have, for months or years, been walking around with the idea of a novel in your mind, in your mind it's transcendent, it's brilliantly comic and howlingly tragic. It contains everything you know and everything you can imagine, about human life on the planet earth. It is vast and mysterious and awe-inspiring. It is a cathedral made of fire. At one point we have a writer in a room, struggling to approximate the impossible vision that hovers over his head. He finishes it, with misgivings. One of the consolations of writing books is the seemingly unquenchable conviction that next book book will be better, will be bigger and bolder and more comprehensive and true to the lives we live. We exist in a condition of hope. We love the beauty and truth that come to us, and we do our best to tamp down our doubts and disappointments. We are on a quest, and are not discouraged by our collective suspicion that the perfection we look for in art is about as likely to turn up as is the Holy Grail. That is one of the reasons we, I mean we humans, are not only the creators, translators and consumers of literature, but also its subjects. [from an essay by Michael Cunningham in the New York Times dated October 3, 2010]

An Image