More specifically concerning: observation
22.02.02 – Friday
22 February 2002, around 7.41.
One would not hesitate to call her pretty; I wouldn’t, at any rate. Neither would one doubt that she was what some might describe as ‘a woman of opinion’ much as one might say that Bertie Wooster’s Aunt Agatha, in the Wodehouse stories, is ‘a woman of opinion.’ It should come as little surprise, then, […]
23.02.02 – Saturday
23 February 2002, around 7.38.
The smell of roses; melting ice; a warm room. Also. Books; dust; wool; ink; the faint metallic, mechanical savor of a fountain pen. Can one compose oneself? A lack of order. Unsavory.
Cultural Relativity
10 January 2003, around 9.48.
The scene was, necessarily, amusing. The setting—the dining room of New College, Oxford, shadows flickering across wooden panels and stained glass from the candles upon the table, which was set for a three-course dinner. We had by this point moved on to the port and chocolates portion of the feast, a few lingering half-filled glasses […]
Montaigne 1.18
15 May 2015, around 16.21.
They who have had a good drubbing in a fight may be led back to the charge on the morrow, though still wounded and bleeding; but if they have been given a good fright by the enemy, you will not induce them even to look at them. —Montaigne (Essays, ‘Of Fear’) The consideration of fear […]
Montaigne 1.37
25 September 2015, around 18.02.
‘Death of Cato’ by Pietro Testa (1648) anachronism Loe, here are wonders, we have more Poets than judges and interpreters of poesie. It is an easier matter to frame it than to know it: Being base and humble, it may be judged by the precepts and art of it: But the good and loftie, the […]
bettered novels (22.2)
20 February 2016, around 13.25.
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, part 2, a brief notice of the servants (1813).
on being seen
19 November 2020, around 5.31.
Tu n’as rien vu à Hiroshima. Rien. // J’ai tout vu. Tout. Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed. —Arthur Conan Doyle (‘A Scandal in Bohemia’, section 1) Had Marguerite Duras […]
the rosy outlook
21 August 2023, around 10.07.
It is a nightmarish scene, yet one that seems to embody the conditions of a new dark age. Our vision is increasingly universal, but our agency is ever more reduced. We know more and more about the world, while being less and less able to do anything about it. The resulting sense of helplessness, rather […]