“In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.”- Camus
For audio version click here : Next to my desk is a postcard copy of William Degouve de Nunques’s 1897 painting Nocturne au parc royal de Bruxelles. An image of the painting appears at the beginning of this post. Paintings that move us do so in a wordless language, but we are caught by words in our attempt to explain their effects. For example, I can describe how this picture affects me: a romantic image, […]
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For audio version click here : We are planning a trip. The map has been flattened upon the table. Hunched over it, I speculate on the far north – Wolf Point or Glasgow, Fort Peck or Froid, Dagmar, Dooley, Antelope or Comertown? Or, moving south – to Savage and the Big Sheep Mountains, to Crow Rock, to Angela? Or deeper south to Wyamo or Recluse, Ulm or Ucross, Lost Cabin, Barnum or northwest to the […]
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For audio version click here “Remember me.” Hamlet, Act I, Scene v My composition professor in undergraduate school lived in an aging industrial city in a neighborhood made up of compacted row homes with narrow porches that were separated from the sidewalk by a thin railing and one step — architecturally, the most intimate of neighborhoods. He spoke more than once of his after-dinner pleasure – walking the blocks around his home with his wife […]
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For audio version click here : A few days ago I drove to a nearby trail on preserved land that I visit infrequently — another mucky, rainy mosquito-day but still and always a day to be out. The trail is named after a supervisor who died of cancer; it rises to a high plateau dominated by a pair of microwave stations. The woods are at least third generation and probably fourth and maybe even fifth. […]
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