Emotion and Intellect

The very essence of literature is the war between emotion and intellect, between life and death. When literature becomes too intellectual- when it begins to ignore the passions, the emotions- it becomes sterile, silly, and actually without substance.

-Isaac Bashevis Singer

tp://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/isaac-bashevis-singer/about-isaac-bashevis-singer/706/

The Tale

"I'm sure," Mrs. Flowers said, "It is, it is a part of the Tale."

But Violet had seen that it would not be clearer until later. The Tale: yes, this was part of the Tale, but she had suddenly seen, as a person alone in a room reading or working at the end of day sees, as she raises her eyes from work that has for some reason grown obscure and difficult, that evening had come, and that's the reason; and that it would long grow darker before it lightened.

"Please," she said, "have tea. We'll light the lights. Stay awhile."

-Little, Big, John Crowley

http://www.littlebig25.com/PerpetualCrowleyInterview.html

City of Twelve Towers

"Truly girl, you have never hear of the City of Twelve Towers?" Bartholomew stroked his fur as though it were a beard and peered at me. "Seat of the Papess, She Who Was Born in the Purple, the Anointed City which shines like a summer star?"

"Never!" I cried breathlessly.

"Very well," he chuckled, straightening his back like a teacher about to give lessons, "your kind mother permitting, I shall tell you of the Dreaming City, enclosed in her seraphic spheres..."

-In the Night Garden, Catherynne Valente

http://www.catherynnemvalente.com/

A Notebook Handy

I've forgotten who it was that said creation is memory. My own experiences and the various things I have read remain in my memory and become the basis upon which I create something new. I couldn't do it out of nothing. For this reason, since the time I was a young man I have always kept a notebook handy when I read a book. I write down my reactions and what particularly moves me. I have stacks and stacks of these college notebooks, and when I go off to write, these are what I read. Somewhere they always provide me with a point of breakthrough. Even for single lines of dialogue I have taken hints from these notebooks. So what I want to say is, don't read books while lying down in bed.

-Akira Kurosawa, Something Like an Autobiography

http://www.akirakurosawa.com/

Only a Full House

I woke beneath a clear blue sky
The sun a shout the breeze a sigh
My old hometown and the streets I knew
Were wrapped up in a royal blue
I heard my friends laughing out across the fields
The girls in the gloaming and the birds on the wheel
The raw smell of horses and the warm smell of hay
Cicadas electric in the heat of the day
A run of Three Sisters and the flush of the land
And the lake was a diamond in the valley's hand
The straight of the highway and the scattered out hearts
They were coming together they were pulling apart
And angels everywhere were in my midst
In the ones that I loved in the ones that I kissed
I wondered what it was I'd been looking for up above
Heaven is so big there ain't no need to look up
So I stopped looking for royal cities in the air
Only a full house gonna have a prayer

-Josh Ritter, Thin Blue Flame

http://www.weallwantsomeone.org/2009/12/03/josh-ritter-thin-blue-flame/

On Average, Better Adult Oucomes

Sustainable edges. Returns on capital investment. Trajectories of capability-building. What’s interesting here is that everyone speaks the same language, everyone agrees on the meaning of the terms. There’s a certain country-club quality to it. We’re all members. We understand one another. We understand that the capabilities we should be developing are the capabilities that will “get us ahead.” We understand that Bill Gates is a logical person to talk to about education because billionaire capitalists generally know something about running a successful business, and American education is a business whose products (like General Motors’, say), are substandard, while Singapore’s are kicking ass. We understand that getting ahead of low-wage, high-human-capital communities will allow us “to thrive.”

Unlike most country clubs, alas, this one is anything but exclusive; getting far enough beyond its gates to ask whether that last verb might have another meaning can be difficult. Success means success. To thrive means to thrive. The definitions of “investment,” “accountability,” “value,” “utility” are fixed and immutable; they are what they are. Once you’ve got that down, everything is easy: According to David Brooks (bringing up the back of my Times parade), all we need to do is make a modest investment in “delayed gratification skills.” Young people who can delay gratification can “master the sort of self-control that leads to success”; they “can sit through sometimes boring classes” and “perform rote tasks.” As a result, they tend to “get higher SAT scores,” gain acceptance to better colleges, and have, “on average, better adult outcomes."

-Dehumanized, Mark Slouka

http://harpers.org/archive/2009/09/0082640

It's Clear that I've been Blind

Looking back through time

It's clear that I've been blind, I've been a fool

To open up my heart to all

That jealousy, that bitterness, that ridicule

And if you want it come and get it

For crying out loud

The love that I was giving you was

Never in doubt

-David Gray, Babylon

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/sy-296332003/david_gray_babylon_official_music_video/