"Must you delight in torturing yourself? Was ever such a mighty heart so weak?"

-- Jean Racine, Berenice (III.ii.815-16)

"May I tell her 'I love you' without trembling?

Already, ah, I tremble. My torn heart

Mistrusts this moment much as I desired it.

Long since, she put an end to all my hopes

And bade me never utter more my love.

For five years I kept silent; till today

I hid my passion under friendship's veil.

...

What shall I profit from this rash avowal?

Since I must go, why go, annoying her?

Let me withdraw, depart, without a word,

And far away let me forget or die.

What? Must she never know the pangs I suffer?

And must I always weep and gulp my tears?

-- ibid (I.ii.20-36)

Mediterranean Baroque

Baroque romance and passion. Just because it's so good.

So good.

Here are the words to the second one. I won't translate them--they're rather erotic; Song of Solomon erotic. Translate them yourself, if you wish.

Pigliate la paletta e vae pi’ ffoco

E va’ alla casa di lu ‘nnammurato

E passa duje ore ‘e juoco.

Si mamma se n’addona ‘e chiste juoco

Dille ca so’ state falelle de foco,

E vule di’ e llà, chello che vo’ la femmena fa!

Luce lu sole quanno è buono tiempo,

Luce lu pettu tujo, donna galante

Mpietto li tieni duje pugnali argiento.

A chi li tocchi bella, nci fa santo,

E ti li tocchi je ca so’ l’amante

E ‘mParaviso jamme certamente…

E vule di’ e llà, chello che vo’ la femmena fa!

Breathe

Happened upon this film today, and it was wonderful. Truly extraordinary; I recommend it wholeheartedly. I don't think I've ever seen a finer example of what True Love truly is.

"When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, 'Woman, where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee?
She said,'No man, Lord.'
And Jesus said unto her, 'Neither do I condemn thee. Go, and sin no more.'" -- John 8:10,11

This is one of my very favorite stories in the Bible. But it has also always made me feel guilty. I've always read Jesus's final words to the woman as just a command. And when I read it, I remember that I always do sin again, and I ask myself why I just can't be good.

But just now something different and wonderful appeared to me as I read this passage: Jesus wasn't just telling her to go and be good; he was freeing her. "Go, and sin no more" was spoken in the same way as "Rise, take up your bed and walk." The cripple couldn't obey of his own power if those were just words, and neither could the sinner. It only works if The Word speaks the words, and makes one able to obey.

Joe Versus the Volcano - The Door to the Universe

This is one of my favorite scenes from Joe vs. the Volcano. The fantastic song the mariachis play is a Spanish adaptation of this:

Marooned Without You

from one of my all-time favorite movies

Why is my heart marooned without you?

The sun goes down, my dreams begin their refrain

I call to whatever holds you

My beloved, I wait and I wane.

Why is my heart marooned without you?

A tiny light upon the sea.

My heart is so afraid,

You have broken away;

Tell me darling, I pray

You will come to me soon.

Air and Angels

Twice or thrice had I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame,
Angels affect us oft, and worshipped be;
Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.
But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
More subtle than the parent is,
Love must not be, but take a body too,
And therefore what thou wert, and who,
I bid Love ask, and now
That it assume thy body, I allow,
And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.

Whilst thus to ballast love, I thought,
And so more steadily to have gone,
With wares which would sink admiration,
I saw, I had love's pinnace overfraught;
Every thy hair for love to work upon
Is much too much, some fitter must be sought;
For, nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme, and scattering bright, can love inhere;
Then as an Angel, face and wings
Of air, not pure as it, yet pure doth wear,
So thy love may be my love's sphere;
Just such disparity
As is 'twixt Air and Angels' purity,
'Twixt women's love, and men's will ever be.

-- John Donne

Life Lessons from Centenarians

This is simply lovely.

Judy Garland - Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

This is the only good version of this song: the original lyrics, which capture the exquisite melancholy of being separated from someone you love at Christmas. Note the date: 1944. Bing Crosby's and Karen Carpenter's voices were fantastic, but they ruined it by trying to make it more "positive" and "upbeat". I don't know the story behind the changing of the lyrics, but I can just picture Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra saying "Say, how 'bout we make this a little more upbeat? This song is depressing!" Bah, same mentality that added that dumb final verse to "Gloomy Sunday" about waking up and finding it was all a dream when they translated it to English. But by taking away the melancholy of the song, they took away its deeper meaning; because it's also a song of courage, and of hope. Foolish hope, perhaps. Many, many people who were separated from their loved ones in 1944 were never going to spend another Christmas with them. But when you're living on hope, it's all you have, and you have to do just what the song says: make the best of here and now, and keep hoping that that thing, whatever it is, is going to get better. Otherwise, the only alternative is melancholy's hideous cousin, despair.

"Minuet no. 60" - Danish String Quartet

This is lovely. My daughter heard this quartet on NPR and told me about them.

I danced a minuet in my first acting job (outside school plays). It was Cinderella, and I was a courtier and the captain of the guard. Also, in my brief time taking piano, I complained about having to learn children's songs like "Twinkle-Twinkle Little Star", and my teacher in frustration said, "Well, how about some Bach, then?" To which I replied, "Yes, please!" So the only thing I ever really learned on piano was Bach's Minuet in G. I was kind of a pain in the ass when I was young. Ha ha, yes, I know what you're thinking, so let me say it for you: "You're still a pain in the ass, Mike!"

Your pardon, if the nudes offend anyone. I didn't make the video. Although I personally have no objection to the aesthetic admiration of the feminine form, as long as one can do so without inordinate lust (which I can). God made the universe beautiful, and the very last thing he created was the most beautiful thing of all: the woman. "Rejoice in the wife of your youth...let her breasts satisfy thee always." (Proverbs 5:18-19)

Plutarch on Marital Relations

"Some men, either unable or unwilling to mount themselves into their saddles through infirmity or laziness, teach their horses to fall upon their knees, and in that posture to receive their riders. In like manner there are some persons who, having married young ladies not less considerable for the nobility of their birth than their wealthy dowries, take little care themselves to improve the advantages of such a splendid conjunction, but with a severe moroseness labor to depress and degrade their wives, proud of the mastery and vaunting in domestic tyranny. Whereas in this case it becomes a man to use the reins of government with as equal regard to the quality and dignity of the woman as to the stature of the horse." -- Plutarch, Conjugal Precepts

I came across this today, and it struck me as a fine example of the inaccuracy of the standard modern feminist narrative of the past. That is, that before feminism came and enlightened us and set women free from the shackles and dungeons of patriarchalism, all women were everywhere oppressed by cruel men who valued them not at all except for the pleasure and fruit their bodies afforded. Here is an example from the first century A.D. of a man--a Greco-Roman and a pagan, no less, teaching other men that they should be respectful and gentle to their wives.

I, on the other hand, maintain that, though it is true, has been true, and unfortunately, always will be true (until the restoration of Justice and all things upon the Earth), that there are bad men who treat women badly, that the patriarchal past is not nearly so monolithically oppressive and evil as they pretend. There were men who treated their wives badly. And there were men who treated their wives well. Just as there are now. Different ages and cultures contained varying mixes of the two: one could very easily say, for example that women were treated much better on the whole in Victorian England than they were in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. I would argue that women are treated much worse on average in relationships by men in our society today than they were a hundred, or even fifty years ago. But there have always been good men, who genuinely love women and desire and strive to treat them kindly and with respect and dignity.

But the feminist narrative is not about accuracy or truth. It is propaganda, pure and simple. In order to sell a radical ideology, one must create a dichotomy of oppressor class vs. victim class, and then re-write history and define the world according to that view. Communists use proletariat and bourgeoisie; Nazis used Jews and Arians; the French reign of terror used common and noble; and feminists use women and men.

As an example, feminists reading this passage will no doubt seize immediately upon the use of the horse as a metaphor, and claim that Plutarch is equating women to livestock. But in reality, it is just a metaphor: just as, when Jesus uses agricultural parables to demonstrate spiritual truths, he is not equating his disciples to plants in value or worth--it's just a metaphor. Focus instead, on his actual theme--that husbands should show "equal regard to the quality and dignity of the woman". And it's not equal regard to the quality and dignity of the horse--it's to the physical stature of the horse, in regard to mounting it. Again, metaphor. Meaning that the man must himself rise up to the challenge of being the husband of a woman of quality and dignity, as he must make the effort to mount a tall horse, rather than lowering the horse to his own level.

Offenbach: Les Contes d'Hoffmann / Act 3 - Barcarolle (Arr. For Violin, ...

I am left breathless.

"One who pricks the eye will make tears fall, and one who pricks the heart bares its feelings."

Ecclesiasticus 22:19

"It is true that sin is the cause of all this suffering, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."
-- Jesus

(from Revelations of Divine Love, by Julian of Norwich)

"What does that feel like?" she asked.
We were talking about being in love. True love.

She was a pretty girl, with a big dog, who was curled up at my feet.
She'd gotten out of her Volvo,
barefoot, long hair loose
her femininity showing through her thin cotton t-shirt
While I was sitting at a roadside crossing
reclining against my backpack
boots off
eating trail mix and jerky
and thinking about the coming rain

Over the next few days, we crossed paths several times
She said she was trying to make it to the North Carolina border and back over the weekend
But I met her coming back the other direction, and she kept showing up
like she couldn't make up her mind
And we talked

I should probably have been hitting on her
It felt like that's what she wanted
But instead, we ended up talking about You.

"When she walks by," I answered,
"I see sparkly fairy-trails behind her.
When she's in the same room,
I hear a faint hum, just below the silence,
like angels' music.
When she's in the same building,
I feel a warm glow in my chest,
like opium.
Just knowing that she is in the world,
even if I never see her again,
makes me see it as a brighter, more beautiful place,
And loving her
makes me love everyone else more."

"In this vision he also showed me a little thing, the size of a hazelnut in the palm of my hand, and it was round as a ball. I looked at it with my mind's eye and thought, 'What can this be?'  And the answer came to me, 'It is all that is made.' I wondered how it could last, for it was so small I thought it might suddenly have disappeared. And the answer in my mind was, It lasts and will last for ever, because God loves it; and everything exists in the same way by the love of God." -- Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love

 Breakfast of champions

I love complimenting ladies. I love the way a girl's face looks when she feels pretty. And how, sometimes, she can't help but prance a little bit in her movements when she feels herself being admired.

"Nobody can write a new fairy tale ; you can only mix up and dress up the old, old stories, and put the characters in new dresses."

 -- Andrew Lang