...at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered....
-- T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets
This note summarizes some of the themes in my journal notes of
1995-06-23,
1999-02-22,
2001-03-20, and
2001-03-22.
From a description of the year 1900:
"...in Paris. The International Exposition of that year was the greatest in a series held in the city. Everything was gigantic: the Ferris wheel, 350 feet high, could carry 1,600 people at one time.... Paris was the cultural capital of the world..."
From my journal note of February 22, 1999:
"Anomalies must be expected along the conceptual frontier between the temporal and the eternal."
-- The Death of Adam, by Marilynne Robinson, Houghton Mifflin, 1998, essay on Marguerite de Navarre
From my century-end journal note (not yet digitized) of December 21, 1999:
"D'exterieur en l'interieur entre
Qui va par moi, et au milieu du centre
Me trouvera, qui suis le point unique,
La fin, le but de la mathematique;
Le cercle suis dont toute chose vient,
Le point ou tout retourne et se maintient."
-- Marguerite de Navarre
"Now, you see," Mrs. Whatsit said, "he would be there, without that long trip. That is how we travel."
-- "The Tesseract," Chapter 5 in A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1962
From my journal note of February 22, 1999 (written before I had seen the New York Times magazine travel section of Sunday, February 28, 1999):
"The eternal in the temporal."
-- Robert Stone's summary of Buddhism, page 373 in A Flag for Sunrise, Knopf, 1981. (Contrast with the above remark by Marilynne Robinson, who is an apologist for Christianity -- specifically, the doctrines of John Calvin.)
For many flags for sunrise, see the photo of Buddhist prayer flags on pages 18-19 of "The Sophisticated Traveler," Part 2 of The New York Times Magazine of Sunday, February 28, 1999.
"Examples are the stained-glass windows of knowledge."
-- Vladimir Nabokov, Strong Opinions, Vintage International paperback, 1990, page 312
For examples of the anomalies of Marilynne Robinson (journal note of February 22, 1999), see page 86 of the February 28, 1999, "Sophisticated Traveler" cited above:
Paris Was Never Like This!
There are at least nine anomalies in
this composite view of the city, painted
by Wilson McLean. No clues, no answers --
identify them just for the fun of it.
"Thank heaven for little girls!"
-- Maurice Chevalier in the film "Gigi"
For an endorsement of Chevalier's sentiment, see the photograph by Jamie Scott-Long at the bottom right corner of page 21 in the "Sophisticated Traveler" cited above. Note especially the eyes of the child in the foreground.
"For the essence and the end
Of his labor is beauty...
one beauty, the rhythm of that Wheel,
and who can behold it is happy
and will praise it to the people."
-- Robinson Jeffers, "Point Pinos and Point Lobos," quoted at the end of The Cosmic Code, by Heinz Pagels, Simon & Schuster, 1982
"These are the stories of the People."
-- Priscilla Olson, introduction to Ingathering, by
Zenna Henderson, The NESFA Press, 1995
"And the wheel goes round and round."
-- Rosanne Cash, "The Wheel," Columbia Records, 1993
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