1. IT’S ONE THING TO LIKE something. It’s something quite else to know why you like it — and how it came to be. 2. “Informed appreciation” is the key to that knowing. Only when you can comprehend the effort,…
Tag: …wow.
I mean “wow.” Just … wow.
The only difference between a madman and myself is that I am not mad.”
— Salvador Dali
5 Thoughts: Comix with an X
1. CRUMB. GRIFFITH. SHELTON. THESE (AND other “sequential artists“) were the visual architects of my immediate post-adolescent universe; whose spare-but-dense works were strewn reverently on the couches and mattresses of my very late teens and very early 20s; whose fractured…
“For My Next Trick, I Will Unite the Universe…”
A FUN WAY TO ENTERTAIN and enlighten early adolescents is via the following exercise: “What’s the first dimension?” you’d ask. They’d answer, “Length.” “The second?” “Width.” “Third?” “Height.” “Fourth?” “Time!” “That’s right. Now, for my next trick, I will unite…
To gain a yirah[awe]-inducing glimpse of the transcendent, you must sharpen your inner awareness to perceive divine Oneness wherever you look. You can practice shifting your inner vision to apprehend the scintillating divine presence in an apple, a table, a car, a baby’s eyes, anywhere in this world. When you make that choice and adjust your perception in this way, you have placed HaShem [that-which-some-people-call-G?d] before you, and yirah is sure to overtake your heart as if the floor beneath you had suddenly fallen away.”
–From the monthly YASHAR newsletter)
ORL Interview: Ivan Stang
INTERVIEWING ONE’S CULTURAL HEROES IS one of the greatest thrills of a career in journalism — even of amateur journalism. Such was the position in which I found myself while working for Obscure Research Labs in the early-to-mid-1990s. It gave…
How I Missed the Moonwalk
THE LAST THING I REMEMBER is Neil Armstrong opening the LEM’s front hatch to begin his televised and epic descent. When I was seven years old, and crazy for space, I had memorized the names of all the astronauts from…
Grudge Match
THE GOLDEN RULE OF INTERFAITH colloquy: Don’t Confuse The Levels. A few years ago, a “JewBu” (Jewish Buddhist) friend of mine told me a story that he felt illustrated the superiority of Buddhism over Judaism, or at least the limitations…
On Homo relator (w/ Special Guest Star John Wheeler)
IT TOOK A WEIRD BOUT of synchronistic weather to illustrate how our species loves to tell stories. First, you need to know about Mugwort Manor. It was a Victorian apartment near the corner of San Francisco’s Fulton and McAllister streets…
Backyard astronomers are a special breed. They savor their moments under the stars. They have an infatuation — a love affair — with the cosmos that grows and nurtures itself just as meaningful human relationships do. Of course, it is a less definable one-way relationship, but I have come to regard that feeling as the closest I can ever come to being at one with nature. After a night under the stars, I have a sense of mellowness, an amalgam of humility, wonder and discovery. The universe is beautiful, in both the visual and spiritual sense.”
–Terence Dickinson, Nightwatch: A Practical Guide to Viewing the Universe
First Graf: On the Road
HAVING FIRST (AND LAST) READ this shortly before a 1985-6 cross-country hitchhiking-and-bus-adventure, I’d forgotten how good it was until beginning to read it aloud to The Partner recently. A rollicking, crying-out-for-emulation 1957 work, what strikes me about it now is…
“Free Moon Trips!”
THERE MAY BE NO QUICKER way to evoke reverent awe than by looking through a telescope at the night’s rich bounty. I was 13 when I first trained a small refractor, a gift from my parents, on the planet Saturn.…