April snow

will make the good things grow

Obsessed with the C-G-D-A-E in "A Day In The Life"

my father's namesake

Saturday, March 23, 2019, was a day that defies summary, so I'll let the photos lead as usual.

First Evangelical Lutheran Church, stained glass, trumpet song. A eulogy about the "man who stayed at home," whose story, like Leopold Bloom's, would be much harder to write and read than The Odyssey (and therefore/all the more worthwhile). And a quote from this book: 

I'll love you forever

I'll like you for always

As long as I'm living

My [family] you'll be.

My cousin Delia taught me that the sweets in the lower left-hand corner are called "Buckeyes" and should not be consumed by University of Michigan fans.

Back at the aforementioned home: Great-Grandfather Ernst constructed hundreds of drawers to house everything from staples to solder, and Great-Uncle Bill contorted pipes to fit crawlspaces.

Great-Aunt Norma forms flowers from bread dough, on display in the shop, home, and here. Framed:

You never really leave 

the people you have loved. 

Part of them stays with you, 

leaving a part of you with them.

Here's my mom with two periwinkle-colored roses in her ears! Aunt Norma lovingly gave them to us, along with an ingredient for her six-decade marriage: "Respect."

An afternoon spent poring over pictures, with yellow lamplight gradually replacing the white of day.

Very fruitful poring! Top: my grandma Marion as a child (center), holding a tinier Great-Uncle Bill. Next generation back: passports (Reisepässen) from 1926 featuring my great-grandparents, Ernst Rudloff and Margarethe Bardenhagen. Great-Grandma ("Urgroßmutti") passed her prominent "Bardenhagen" nose to almost everyone in the house that afternoon. I did a lil google and discovered that Rudloff and Bardenhagen roughly translate to "fame and glory wolf" and "poets in an enclosure," respectively. Lastly, another generation back: my great-great-grandparents, one of whom was also a William. I think Great-Uncle Bill resembles his grandmother.

My great-grandparents' resting place, less than two miles from the home that their son lived in for most of his life. His ashes will stay, too, and when commingled with Aunt Norma's will be the bed for a tree.

And the very best reunion: I hadn't seen Delia and Uncle Bob for about ten years. My heart was full at last, and I felt like I could talk to them forever. Looking forward to having everyone together again one day. If Delia and I plan à la Parent Trap, that day will be within a year!

To end: Back at the Days Inn with Aunt Norma's flowers in my hair, processing each conversation. I am filled with love for my family: Great-Aunt Norma, Aunt Connie, Uncle David, Aunt Karen, and all their children, as well as for my dear own Breck-Grimes family. Thank you, Uncle Bill, for loving your family so well, and for bringing us together again. I wish I had met you sailing the lakes or the skies.

Psalm 23:6

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. 

When pages are places

Some choice passages from The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann.

Seasons

Behold “a wide, luxuriantly green park of hardwoods, of elms, planes, beeches, maples, birches, with subtle gradations in the colors of the full, fresh, glossy foliage. Their tops rustled gently in the breeze, and the air was perfumed with their delicate, moist balm... A rainbow stretched across flank of the landscape... shimmering in pure splendor and flowing like rich oils down into the dense, lustrous green” (480-481). Rattlesnake Mountain, Oct 2018.

“The sun abruptly hid itself... and a wind bearing cold, alien air that went to your bones and seemed to have come from unknown regions of ice suddenly swept down through the valley, setting the temperature plunging and inaugurating a whole new regimen” (92). The wind bowl, Feb 2019.

We could tell that “spring had definitely arrived, a spring without any hint of summer’s oppressiveness—with spicy, light, thin air, with a radiant, silvery-blue sky and blossoming meadows as colorful as a child’s paint box” (364). Middlebury Organic Farm, May 2018. Photo by Yuki.

Waiting for “great masses of Alpine campion and wild pansies, daisies, marguerites, cowslips in red and yellow—much larger and more beautiful than any Hans Castorp remembered seeing in the flatlands, that is, to the extent that he had ever paid any attention to them—plus nodding soldanella, little ciliated bells of blue, purple, and pink, a specialty of the region” (365). Garden-peeping in Meredith, Aug 2018.

Boredom

“What is the cause of the enervation and apathy that arise when the rules of life are not abrogated from time to time? It is not so much the physical and mental exhaustion and abrasion that come with the challenges of life (for these, in fact, simple rest would be the best medicine); the cause is, rather, something psychological, our very sense of time itself—which, if it flows with uninterrupted regularity, threatens to elude us... Emptiness and monotony may stretch a moment or even an hour and make it 'boring,' but they can likewise abbreviate and dissolve large, indeed the largest units of time, until they seem nothing at all. Conversely, rich and interesting events are capable of filling time, until hours, even days, are shortened and speed past on wings; whereas on a larger scale, interest lends the passage of time breadth, solidity, and weight, so that years rich in events pass much more slowly than do paltry, bare, featherweight years that are blown before the wind and are gone" (102). Winter storm, Feb 2019.

Variety is the spice of life: "What people call boredom is actually an abnormal compression of time caused by monotony... When one day is like every other, then all days are like one, and perfect homogeneity would make the longest life seem very short, as if it had flown by in a twinkling. Habit arises when our sense of time falls asleep, or at least, grows dull; and if the years of youth are experienced slowly, while the later years of life hurtle past at an every-increasing speed, it must be habit that causes it. We know full well that the insertion of new habits or the changing of old ones is the only way to preserve life, to renew our sense of time, to rejuvenate, intensify, and retard our experience of time—and thereby renew our sense of time itself" (102). Nobody likes you when you're 23, Jan 2019.

Coming and going: "[This] is the reason for every change of scenery and air, for a trip to the shore: the experience of a variety of refreshing episodes. The first few days in a new place have a youthful swing to them, a kind of sturdy, long stride—that lasts for about six to eight days. Then, to the extent that we 'settle in,' the gradual shortening becomes noticeable. Whoever clings to life, or better, wants to cling to life, may realize to his horror that the days have begun to grow light again and are scurrying past... To be sure, this refreshment of our sense of time extends beyond the interlude; its effect is noticeable again when we return to our daily routine. The first few days at home after a change of scene are likewise experienced in a new, broad, more youthful fashion—but only a very few, for we are quicker to grow accustomed to the old rules than to their abrogation. And if our sense of time has grown weary with age or was never all that strongly developed—a sign of inborn lack of vitality [is this me]—it very soon falls asleep again, and within twenty-four hours it is as if we were never gone and our journey was merely last night’s dream” (103). Routine, Jan 2019.

Spacetime: t, x, y, z

The classroom where we ask: “What is time? A secret—insubstantial and omnipotent. A prerequisite of the external world, a motion intermingled and fused with bodies existing and moving in space. But would there be no time, if there were no motion? No motion, if there were no time? What a question! Is time a function of space? Or vice versa? Or are the two identical? An even bigger question! Time is active, by nature it is much like a verb, it both 'ripens' and 'brings forth.' And what does it bring forth? Change! Now is not then, here is not there—for in both cases motion lies in between. But since we measure time by a circular motion closed in on itself, we could just as easily say that its motion and change are rest and stagnation—for the then is constantly repeated in the now, the there in the here. Moreover, since, despite our best desperate attempts, we cannot imagine an end to time or a finite border around space, we have decided to 'think' of them as eternal and infinite—in the apparent belief that even if we are not totally successful, this marks some improvement. But does not the very positing of eternity and infinity imply the logical, mathematical negation of things limited and finite, their relative reduction to zero? Is a sequence of events possible in eternity, a juxtaposition of objects in infinity? How does our makeshift assumption of eternity and infinity square with concepts like distance, motion, change, or even the very existence of a finite body in space? Now there’s a real question for you!” (339). Sep 2018.

“We walk and we walk—how long has it been now? How far? It does not matter. And at every step, nothing changes—‘there’ is now ‘here,’ ‘before’ is both ‘now’ and ‘then.’ Time drowns in the unmeasured monotony of space. Where uniformity reigns, movement from point to point is no longer movement; and where movement is no longer movement, there is no time” (537). The commute, Jan 2019. Photo by Nicole.

Topic 9.3, resolving two distant stars: “It was a faith like any other, only worse and more obtuse than the rest... The ether of space—that was exact, was it? The atom, that nice little mathematical joke, ‘the smallest, indivisible particle’—proved, was it? The theory of infinite space and time—that was definitely based on experience, was it? Indeed, with just a modicum of logic, one could achieve very amusing results from the dogma of infinite space and time—to wit, nothing. To wit, the insight that realism was true nihilism. And why? For the simple reason that in relation to infinity any given unit of mass approached zero. There was no size in infinity, and no duration or change in eternity, either. In infinite space, given that every distance is the mathematical equivalent of zero, there could be no two adjacent points, let alone a body, let alone movement…What blasphemous nonsense, ultimately, to measure the ‘distance’ of some star or other from the earth in trillions of miles or even light-years and to imagine that by the ruse of number you had given the human spirit an insight into the nature of infinity and eternity—when infinity had absolutely nothing to do with size, nor eternity with duration and distances in time… Indeed, the child’s simple belief that stars were holes in the tent of heaven through which eternal brightness shone was many thousand times dearer to his heart than all the empty, absurd, and presumptuous babble about the ‘cosmos’ perpetuated by monistic science” (681-683). Christmas tea lights, Dec 2018.

“Space, as it rolls and tumbles away between him and his native soil, proves to have powers normally ascribed only to time; from hour to hour, space brings about changes very like those time produces, yet surpassing them in certain ways. Space, like time, gives birth to forgetfulness, but does so by removing an individual from all relationships and placing him in a free and pristine state—indeed, in but a moment it can turn a pedant and philistine into something vagabond. Time, they say, is water from the river Lethe, but alien air is a similar drink; and if its effects are less profound, it works all the more quickly” (4). CNY in NH, Feb 2019.

Music {and, vs., in} written word

Debatable: “Yes, I am a fancier of music—which is not to say that I particularly revere it—not, for instance, as I love and revere the written word, the bearer of the human intellect, the tool, the shining plow of progress. Music…there is something only semi-articulate about it, something dubious, irresponsible, indifferent... Let music assume its most high-minded pose. Fine! And then our emotions are inflamed. And yet the real point would be to inflame our reason. Music, it would appear, is movement for its own sake—although I suspect it of quietism... Music is invaluable as the ultimate means for awakening our zeal, a power that draws the mind trained for its effects forward and upward. But literature must precede it. By itself, music cannot draw the world forward. By itself, music is dangerous” (111). Tomi Jazz waiting room, Feb 2019. Photo by Diana.

“Word was the glory of humankind, and it alone gave dignity to life. Not just humanism, but humanity itself, man’s dignity and self-respect—they were inseparable from the Word, from literature... And politics were bound up with literature, too—or rather they were derived from the oneness of humanity and literature. For the beautiful Word gave birth to the beautiful deed” (158). 4pm walk, Feb 2019.

“Music a story is like music in that it fills time, 'fills it up so nicely and properly,' 'divides it up,' so that there is 'something to it,' 'something going on'…Time is the element of narration, just as it is the element of life—it is inextricably bound up in it, as bodies are in space. It is also the element of music, which itself measures and divides time, making it suddenly diverting and precious; and related to music, as we have noted, is the story, which also can only present itself in successive events, as movement toward an end (and not as something suddenly, brilliantly present, like a work of visual art, which is pure body bound to time), and even if it would try to be totally here in each moment, would still need time for its presentation." Stories with the Giant Peach, Mar 2019.

t and t-prime: "The time element of music is singular: a segment of human earthly existence in which it gushes forth, thereby ineffably enhancing and ennobling life. Narrative, however, has two kinds of time: first, its own real time, which like musical time defines its movement and presentation; and second, the time of its contents, which has a perspective quality that can vary widely, from a story in which the narrative’s imaginary time is almost, or indeed totally coincident with its musical time, to one in which it stretches out over light-years. A musical piece entitled 'Five Minute Waltz' lasts five minutes—this and only this defines its relationship to time. A story whose contents involved a time span of five minutes, however, could, by means of an extraordinary scrupulosity in filling up those five minutes, last a thousand times as long—and still remain short on boredom, although in relationship to its imaginary time it would be very long in the telling. On the other hand, it is possible for a narrative’s content-time to exceed its own duration immeasurably." Old Country Store, Moultonborough, Mar 2019.

Love, and not reason, yields kind thoughts

“Man is the master of contradictions, they occur through him, and so he is more noble than they. More noble than death, too noble for it—that is the devotion of his heart... Love stands opposed to death—it alone, and not reason, is stronger than death. Only love, and not reason, yields kind thoughts... I will keep faith with death in my heart, but I will clearly remember that if faithfulness to death and to what is past rules our thoughts and deeds, that leads only to wickedness, dark lust, and hatred of humankind. For the sake of goodness and love, man shall grant death no dominion over his thoughts” (487). Cheery dining hall day, Feb 2019.

As Hans fights in WWI: “Farewell, Hans—whether you live or stay where you are! You chances are not good. The wicked dance in which you are caught up will last many a little sinful year yet, and we would not wager much that you will come out whole. To be honest, we are not really bothered by leaving the question open. Adventures in the flesh and spirit, which enhanced and heightened your ordinariness, allowed you to survive in the spirit what you probably will not survive in the flesh. There were moments when, as you 'played king,' you saw the intimation of a dream of love rising up out of death and this carnal body. And out of this worldwide festival of death, this ugly rutting fever that inflames the rainy evening sky all around—will love someday rise up out of this, too?” (706). Looking ahead at Land's End Labyrinth, Aug 2018.

Bits and bats

According to my AP Physics teacher, Mr. Davis, one should only ever invest in “education and property—behold the bourgeoisie!” (504). Another kind of reading: https://davidbach.com/books/. Smart Women Finish Rich tells all about pretax retirement account.

The attitude I should have had in discussion classes: “I’m talking nonsense, I know, but I would rather babble away and at least partially express something difficult than reproduce impeccable cliches” (576).

Silicon Valley fashion: “There he sat, sporting a little beard that he had let grow out by then…which we are forced to interpret as a sign of a certain philosophical indifference to his appearance” (688).

中庸之道: “Humanist—certainly I am that. You will never find me guilty of ascetic tendencies. I affirm, I respect, I love the body, just as I affirm, respect, and love form, beauty, freedom, mirth, and pleasure—just as I champion the ‘world,’ the interests of life against sentimental flight from the world, classicismo against romanticismo” (245).

The essential little intervention: “He saw that the enchantment was broken, that he was released, set free—not by his own actions, as he had to admit to his shame, but set free by elementary external forces, for whom his liberation was a very irrelevant matter” (702).

Youtubers: “To be human was to be ill... and whoever sought to make him healthy and attempted to get him to make peace with nature, to “return to nature” (whereas he had never been natural), the whole pack of Rousseauian prophets—regenerators, vegetarians, fresh-air freaks, sunbath apostles, ad so forth—wanted nothing more than to dehumanize man and turn him into an animal. Humanity? Nobility? The Spirit was what distinguished man—a creature set very much apart from nature, with feelings very much contrary to nature—from the rest of organic life. Therefore, the dignity and nobility of man was based in the Spirit, in illness. In a word, the more ill a man was the more highly human he was, and the genius of illness was more human than that of health” (457). I still like Youtubers.

Cures, and "next" is a weird word

At my piano teacher's 80th birthday party two weeks ago, there wasn't too much conversation; I marveled once at the syncopated slaps of noodle-slurping against silence. We then engaged in the master's postprandial party activity of choice: listening to a recording of Schubert's string quintet. No phones were checked for four movements (save one stealthy student's, under the piano). My teacher's expressions incited imaginings of what eighty years must have brought into those forty-five minutes. Considered the reverse case as well. 

Anyway—I now listen to this piece during ~loner lunch~ (good acoustics in the classroom). It keeps playing as my favorite section of students trickles in for a .ppt-heavy hour. 

A KDFC listener called in to cite a Beethoven violin sonata (unsure which) as a cure for depression. Not physiological phooey: Beethoven's powers of mood-mending and mind-molding cured me just last night (it was amazing! I fell asleep pleasantly emptied of the will to wake, which is fine because it returned with the arpeggio alarm of yore). 22:38-22:58 above are worth your half-minute, and then in context, of course.

I hadn't heard these late sonatas until I met the one whose ghost still inspires the occasional 1 AM letter-to-God: "What was the point?!" At 1:30, I listen to these pieces and I am answered. A boon. So, thkunxt

best gift from Jurby!

gedoo-dolt

Turns out "doodled" in German is actually "gekritzelt."

Newest family member, Ali 💝

Documenting June 2016, ft. Auntie Rosa, Auntie Susan, and REAP in Seoul, Beijing, Sichuan, Hunan, Yunnan, Shaanxi, and Baoji ("precious chicken"). From left to right, top to bottom: Han River paddle-boating, requisite palace-tour garb, a visit to Podotree HQ in Korea's Silicon Valley and Chaeree's unknown-mammal pet, ube; guangchangwu outside Beijing's egg-shaped Grand Theater, tin teacups at a Chonqqing chicken stew shop, bookend, Sichuan Arts Institute hairdo, CPC theater, Auntie Susan commandeering a bus and explaining that you can pee anywhere behind an umbrella, countryside dog fam, playing music with a Christian Tujia family befriended on bus, Lijiang banana tree, Lijiang llama, Dali lake horizon; one night in a pod hotel, my fellow REAPers Stella and Laura, whizzing through rural Shaanxi, Xi'an blue taxi, morning exercises and iron-deficient aliments, bowls plastered with Angelababy stickers, cathartic karaoke, baijiu-drenched dinner with DoEd officials, and lastly (blast past onset of Hepatitis C to a) Xi'an bar window.

Lijiang llama!

patchwork and piece

CA summer

"The choice of occupation, that is, of [Pierre's] way of life—now that that choice was so restricted—seemed to him such an easy matter that he forgot that a superfluity of comforts of life destroys all joy in satisfying one’s needs, while great freedom in the choice of occupation—such freedom as his wealth, his education, and his social position had given him in his own life—is just what makes the choice of occupation insolubly difficult, and destroys the desire and possibility of having an occupation" (1090).

$quirreling

"There had been the extraordinary autumn weather that always comes as a surprise, when the sun hangs low and gives more heat than in spring, when everything shines so brightly in the rare clear atmosphere that the eyes smart, when the lungs are strengthened and refreshed by inhaling the aromatic autumn air, when even the nights are warm, and when, in those dark warm nights, golden stars startle and delight us continually by falling from the sky" (935).

grateful for this day: 11/22/18

"On the tray was a bottle of herb-wine, different kinds of vodka, pickled mushrooms, rye-cakes made with buttermilk, honey in the comb, still mead and sparkling mead, apples, nuts (raw and roasted), and nut-and-honey sweets. Afterwards she brought a freshly roasted chicken, ham, preserves made with honey, and preserves made with sugar" (546).

"When an apple has ripped and falls, why does it fall? Because of its attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes it, or because the boy standing below wants to eat it?
Nothing is the cause. All this is only the coincidence of conditions in which all vital organic and elemental events occur. And the botanist who finds that the apple falls because the cellular tissue decays and so forth, is equally right with the child who stands under the tree and says the apple fell because he wanted to eat it and prayed for it" (650).

Life of Yuki, graduation day:
"But hard as they worked till quite late that night,
they could not get everything packed" (919).

"Pierre felt himself to be an insignificant chip fallen
among the wheels of a machine whose action he did
not understand but which was working well" (1035).
do u ever feel like a plastic bag

Said small unit: mouse that lived for 24 hours in trap.
Unlatched and put outside with a peanut.
"Go make some mighty mice."

"The movement of humanity, arising as it does from innumerable arbitrary human wills, is continuous…Only by taking an infinitesimally small unit for observation (the differential of history, that is, the individual tendencies of men) and attaining to the art of integrating them (that is, finding the sum of these infinitesimals) can we hope to arrive at the laws of history" (881).

Scattering of light over snow

"Q = mL, where Q is thermal energy in Joules, m is mass in kg, and L is latent heat!" -Ms. Breck 

"A lump of snow cannot be melted instantaneously. There is a certain limit of time in less than which no amount of heat can melt the snow. On the contrary the greater the heat the more solidified the remaining snow becomes. Of the Russian commanders Kutuzov alone understood this" (1108), and that's why this happened: 

"Charles Minard's 1869 chart showing the number of men
in Napoleon’s 1812 Russian campaign army, their movements,
as well as the temperature they encountered on the return path."
As seen in the beloved book by Tufte!

Love You Forever by Robert Munsch

"Physical and spiritual wounds alike can heal completely only as the result of a vital force from within. Natasha’s wound healed in that way. She thought her life was ended, but her love for her mother [and father] unexpectedly showed her that the essence of life—love—was still active within her. Love awoke, and so did life" (1162).

nesting desktops

“'Yes, in our time it would be hard to live without faith…' remarked Pierre" (1199).

A great article from Dad: "Tolstoy reminds us that to be a Christian is to be a fool and a social outcast, that anyone who wishes to follow Christ has to be prepared to die as an enemy of the state, nailed to the cross. It’s a little bit more than a few verses of "Shine, Jesus, Shine" on a Sunday morning. So don’t think of War and Peace as just some Russian Downton Abbey, full of distracting eye-candy. Not that Tolstoy was averse to the sins of the flesh. Like Count Pierre Bezukhov in War and Peace – who is a thinly veiled self-portrait of Tolstoy himself – his pilgrim’s progress begins in the brothel, and proceeds via a commitment to religious organizations... to a simple inner commitment to the will of God. This faith only has one commandment: love God and love one other – yes, that’s only one commandment because the latter is a consequence of the former. And this commandment will get you into trouble."



Italo Calvino via Stephen Donadio: “A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” I finally know what you mean, Professor, when you said that readers of War and Peace never want it to end.