1)you have a number of good-looking cats in your life
2)yesterday i read an article from the new yorker, an exposition of the views of a south african philosopher, david benatar (the last name is sephardic, i discovered, and the singer who uses it got it from her first husband)
the piece's author, joshua rothman, ends it this way:
On the street, we shook hands. “I’m just going to walk around a bit,” Benatar said. He planned to wander the West Village before heading to the airport. I walked south and, near the World Trade Center, descended into the Oculus, the vast, sepulchral mall and train station that has replaced the one destroyed in the 9/11 attacks. With its towering, spine-like roof and white-marble ribs, it is part skeleton, part cathedral. Standing on the escalator, I watched as a woman with one arm in her jacket struggled to insert the other. An overweight businessman, his ears plugged with earbuds, brushed past me, jostling me with his briefcase. As he reached the bottom, he held the woman’s coat, and she slipped into it."
the whole piece reminded me of a proverbial jewish observation woody allen put into one of his later, less funny films - in it scarlett johannsen has an affair with an ambitious tennis instructor, played by the same guy who was the soccer coach in bend it like beckham
“Life is full of sorrows – it would have been better never to have been born – but who is so lucky? Not one in ten thousand.”
in my imagination, i supplied the famous quote from rabbi hillel that rothman's slice of life from the escalator implies
"If I am not for myself, who will be? If I am for myself only, what am I? If not now, when?"
to unpack rothman's final paragraph a bit - the businessman who jostles him with his briefcase, with earbuds in his ears - in other words, cut off from communication by sound, and not respectful of rothman's personal space as he passes him on the escalator - in a hurry, obviously - nevertheless notices his fellow traveler's difficulty with her coat, and takes a few seconds to help her
rothman's evocative description of the station - "part skeleton, part cathedral" - reminds us both of our mortality, and of our spiritual aspirations, our yearning for eternity
today i read in robert wright's book why buddhism is true
both Buddhism and Christianity say that we inherit at birth a kind of moral confusion, the dispelling of which is one object of the game
as peter rowan sang, when i was at an impressionable age
my sightless eyes, my tongue of stone - my soul is free above
the one redeeming word i've found was love love it's love
1)you have a number of good-looking cats in your life
ReplyDelete2)yesterday i read an article from the new yorker, an exposition of the views of a south african philosopher, david benatar (the last name is sephardic, i discovered, and the singer who uses it got it from her first husband)
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/the-case-for-not-being-born
the piece's author, joshua rothman, ends it this way:
On the street, we shook hands. “I’m just going to walk around a bit,” Benatar said. He planned to wander the West Village before heading to the airport. I walked south and, near the World Trade Center, descended into the Oculus, the vast, sepulchral mall and train station that has replaced the one destroyed in the 9/11 attacks. With its towering, spine-like roof and white-marble ribs, it is part skeleton, part cathedral. Standing on the escalator, I watched as a woman with one arm in her jacket struggled to insert the other. An overweight businessman, his ears plugged with earbuds, brushed past me, jostling me with his briefcase. As he reached the bottom, he held the woman’s coat, and she slipped into it."
the whole piece reminded me of a proverbial jewish observation woody allen put into one of his later, less funny films - in it scarlett johannsen has an affair with an ambitious tennis instructor, played by the same guy who was the soccer coach in bend it like beckham
“Life is full of sorrows – it would have been better never to have been born – but who is so lucky? Not one in ten thousand.”
in my imagination, i supplied the famous quote from rabbi hillel that rothman's slice of life from the escalator implies
"If I am not for myself, who will be? If I am for myself only, what am I? If not now, when?"
to unpack rothman's final paragraph a bit - the businessman who jostles him with his briefcase, with earbuds in his ears - in other words, cut off from communication by sound, and not respectful of rothman's personal space as he passes him on the escalator - in a hurry, obviously - nevertheless notices his fellow traveler's difficulty with her coat, and takes a few seconds to help her
rothman's evocative description of the station - "part skeleton, part cathedral" - reminds us both of our mortality, and of our spiritual aspirations, our yearning for eternity
today i read in robert wright's book why buddhism is true
both Buddhism and Christianity say that we inherit at birth a kind of moral confusion, the dispelling of which is one object of the game
as peter rowan sang, when i was at an impressionable age
my sightless eyes, my tongue of stone -
my soul is free above
the one redeeming word i've found
was love
love
it's love
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWi2d5veq1g