Best album of all time- April 22, 2008 So far, my quizzees have answered: Swans are Dead Blue Pet Sounds My Aim is True Mine Loveless.http://www.caterina.net/archive/001118.html Notes from Dante in Love- April 21, 2008 Dante originally called The Divine Comedy "Vision" T.S. Eliot said people stay in Hell only because they cannot change The Latin word for "knowledge" sapientia, means the distinctions of the tongue, taste In the early 1300s, businesses establish themselves, taking the name "company" which literally means "with bread": companie Memory palaces. "The terrifying gargoyles of the cathedral at Chartres and the monstrous designs unfurling on manuscript pages like the Book of Kells are often considered.http://www.caterina.net/archive/001116.html Neutral Milk Hotel Review- April 16, 2008 It's been almost exactly 10 years since I wrote this review of Neutral Milk Hotel's album In The Aeroplane Over The Sea. 10 years! That album hasn't meant any less to me after all this time. The review could have used a good editor; I'm an incorrigible putter-inner who relies on the help of a strict taker-outer. But it still got halfway to expressing the way music makes you feel like you've just fallen in love, or witnessed a miracle or are living in a poem. Not bad, old self, not bad.http://www.caterina.net/archive/001115.html The use of moods- April 15, 2008 Aw, thank you sweet people for worrying about my being sad. A few books and I was good as new pale green spring grass. It was just a mood. From the Anne Carson I was reading yesterday: He hugged his overcoat closer and tried to assemble in his mind Heidegger's argument about the use of moods. We would think ourselves continuous with the world if we did not have moods. It is state-of-mind that discloses to us (Heidegger claims) that we are beings who have been thrown into something...http://www.caterina.net/archive/001114.html In The Woods by Tana French- April 14, 2008 I almost missed a couple of meetings because of this book, promising myself I'd leave the house and get downtown, but unable to force myself to stop reading, even starting a new chapter over the cries my Inner German screaming you're late, you're late. It's a good book, a thriller. In The Woods is about two detectives on a case regarding a murdered child, eerily similar to a murder that happened 20 years earlier on the same spot, involving the detective Rob Ryan at the same age. The book...http://www.caterina.net/archive/001113.html Book reviews- April 14, 2008 I just went back and read all these old book reviews I wrote 3-5 years ago, and the rest going back to 2000. I'm in New York and sad and broken and missing my bed and dogs and friends and library and so I went to the bookstore and bought paperback copies of three of my favorite books, Invisible Cities, Jesus' Son, and Autobiography of Red. A cup of tea plus words I'd read so many times before and my soul felt warm and wooly and home, even without the dogs and slippers, and housed as it is in...http://www.caterina.net/archive/001112.html (Untitled)- April 13, 2008 New Ending: All over the world the beautiful red breezes went on blowing hand in hand.http://www.caterina.net/archive/001111.html Notes from Deep Economy- April 9, 2008 All primates live in groups and "an isolated individual will repeatedly pull a lever with no reward other than the glimpse of another monkey." (Richard Layard) Medieval cities usually had about 20,000 people, divided into four quarters, with a church in the center, each quarter having its own shops and schools, but everything within easy walking distance. (Jeremy Rifkin, The European Dream) In 1900 the state of Iowa had 1300 local opera houses. "Thousands of tenors earned adequate, if modest,...http://www.caterina.net/archive/001110.html Presocratic Philosophy- April 8, 2008 Thales, a Presocratic philosopher, thought that, contrary to appearances and common sense, the world was composed of water, while Heraclitus thought it was composed of fire. Gleaned from my Intellectual Devotional.http://www.caterina.net/archive/001109.html Daniel Taylor on Change- April 8, 2008 Change doesn't happen because of how we invest our money. Change happens because of how we invest our human energy, and it always has since we came down from the trees. Everyone's got a margin of discretionary energy -- ten percent, twenty percent -- that isn't used up making their way in the world. That's the energy that's available for social change. Taylor runs a non-profit called Future Generations, which I read about in Deep Economy, where it says that the crucial document in their...http://www.caterina.net/archive/001108.html |