Wednesday, September 30, 2009

I ♥ NY



"Every person on the streets of New York is a type. The city is
one big theater where everyone is on display." -Jerry Rubin

Download: "New York USA" by Serge Gainsbourg
Download: "New York City Baby" by Billy Hambrick
Download: "Hard Times In New York Town"* by Bob Dylan
Buy: New York: 365 Days
* Cynthia Gooding Radio Show, 1962

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

What Are You Reading?



Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

© 2009 Chris Arnade

Monday, September 28, 2009

Quote Of The Week

"Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb."

Friday, September 25, 2009

The Neighbor

She lived next door and yet we know next to nothing about her. The rare times we heard her voice there was a kind of calm that moved over the house like a cloud shaped similar to a barking dog. That got their attention and before they knew it, the rains became her hope. She always thought and felt at peace near water; it brought her to a place of solitude. At one point she had other hopes as well; one of which was to become fluent in Chinese and Asian culture. Though they would look foreign, she felt as if they could fit in a suitcase. The move had to happen. It could no longer be put off as each ticking minute could cost her five dollars and a cab ride to Phoenix. The capital of the sun. The town where she belonged.
© 2009 Lee Greenfeld

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

What Are You Reading?



The Afterlife by John Updike /
Benevolence and Betrayal by Alexander Stille

© 2009 Chris Arnade

Monday, September 21, 2009

Quote Of The Week

"The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge"

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Erat Hora

"Thank you, whatever comes." And then she turned
And, as the ray of sun on hanging flowers
Fades when the wind hath lifted them aside,
Went swiftly from me. Nay, whatever comes
One hour was sunlit, and the most high gods
May not make boast of any better thing  
Than to have watched that hour as it passed.

Friday, September 18, 2009

"There Are Eight Million Stories..."



Paul Burke
Rest In Peace

"Paul Burke, who played the upright, soul-searching detective Adam Flint on the acclaimed television drama Naked City, but whose career was halted decades later after he was tried and acquitted on federal racketeering charges, died on Sunday at his home in Palm Springs, Calif." ... Story continues here: Paul Burke Dies At 83 (NY Times)

Thursday, September 17, 2009

What Are You Reading?


Fist Stick Knife Gun by Geoffrey Canada
© 2009 Chris Arnade

Monday, September 14, 2009

Quote Of The Week

"The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action."

Friday, September 11, 2009

Never Forget

Photograph by Lee Greenfeld © 2009

Hum

The days are beautiful
The days are beautiful.

I know what days are.
The other is weather.

I know what weather is.
The days are beautiful.

Things are incidental.
Someone is weeping.

I weep for the incidental.
The days are beautiful.

Where is tomorrow?
Everyone will weep.

Tomorrow was yesterday.
The days are beautiful.

Tomorrow was yesterday.
Today is weather.

The sound of the weather
Is everyone weeping.

Everyone is incidental.
Everyone weeps.

The tears of today
Will put out tomorrow.

The rain is ashes.
The days are beautiful.

The rain falls down.
The sound is falling.

The sky is a cloud.
The days are beautiful.

The sky is dust.
The weather is yesterday.

The weather is yesterday.
The sound is weeping.

What is this dust?
The weather is nothing.

The days are beautiful.
The towers are yesterday.

The towers are incidental.
What are these ashes?

Here is the hate
That does not travel.

Here is the robe
That smells of the night

Here are the words
Retired to their books

Here are the stones
Loosed from their settings

Here is the bridge
Over the water

Here is the place
Where the sun came up

Here is a season
Dry in the fireplace.

Here are the ashes.
The days are beautiful.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

A.I.T.A. Hall Of Fame: Albert Camus





"What is a rebel? A man who says no."

Albert Camus (1913-1960) was a representative of non-metropolitan French literature. His origin in Algeria and his experiences there in the thirties were dominating influences in his thought and work. Of semi-proletarian parents, early attached to intellectual circles of strongly revolutionary tendencies, with a deep interest in philosophy (only chance prevented him from pursuing a university career in that field), he came to France at the age of twenty-five. The man and the times met: Camus joined the resistance movement during the occupation and after the liberation was a columnist for the newspaper Combat. But his journalistic activities had been chiefly a response to the demands of the time; in 1947 Camus retired from political journalism and, besides writing his fiction and essays, was very active in the theatre as producer and playwright (e.g., Caligula, 1944). He also adapted plays by Calderon, Lope de Vega, Dino Buzzati, and Faulkner's Requiem For A Nun. His love for the theatre may be traced back to his membership in L'Equipe, an Algerian theatre group, whose "collective creation" Révolte Dans Les Asturies (1934) was banned for political reasons.

The essay Le Mythe De Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus), 1942, expounds Camus's notion of the absurd and of its acceptance with "the total absence of hope, which has nothing to do with despair, a continual refusal, which must not be confused with renouncement — and a conscious dissatisfaction". Meursault, central character of L'Étranger (The Stranger), 1942, illustrates much of this essay: man as the nauseated victim of the absurd orthodoxy of habit, later — when the young killer faces execution — tempted by despair, hope, and salvation. Dr. Rieux of La Peste (The Plague), 1947, who tirelessly attends the plague-stricken citizens of Oran, enacts the revolt against a world of the absurd and of injustice, and confirms Camus's words: "We refuse to despair of mankind. Without having the unreasonable ambition to save men, we still want to serve them". Other well-known works of Camus are La Chute (The Fall), 1956, and L'Exil Et Le royaume (Exile And The Kingdom), 1957. His austere search for moral order found its aesthetic correlative in the classicism of his art. He was a stylist of great purity and intense concentration and rationality. [From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969]



Read: The Absurd Man
Dig: The Albert Camus Society Of The UK
Buy: The Myth of Sisyphus And Other Essays 
Buy: The Plague/The Fall/Exile And The Kingdom/Selected Essays
Buy: Resistance, Rebellion, And Death: Essays
Buy: The Rebel: An Essay On Man In Revolt 
Buy: The Stranger

Monday, September 7, 2009

Quote Of The Week

"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat."

Saturday, September 5, 2009

The Dionysian Life?


"The wine urges me on, the bewitching wine, which sets even a
wise man to singing and to laughing gently and rouses him up to
dance and brings forth words which were better unspoken."