from Bread and Wine, by Ignazio Silone:

"are you perhaps saying that all divisions between men are artificial, and that struggles are useless?" Pompeo asked.

 "certainly not," Don Paolo said. "but some divisions are artificial, deliberately created to conceal real conflicts. there are divided forces that ought to be united, and artificially united forces that ought to be divided. many present divisions are based on verbal misunderstandings, and many unions are verbal only."

more later...

various updates

as many of you know by now, I've moved to the Bay Area; as many of you also know by now, I am watching every movie Keanu Reeves has ever made. I am far from the first person to do this and I'm certainly not alone in having devoted a not-insignificant chunk of 2019 to the endeavor. (and I mean 2019 specifically: I did not want to use the neologism variously spelled "Keanussance" or "Keanaissance" in this post, but it's unavoidable as what the Internet's termed this summer. incidentally, I did find "Reevesnaissance" in a semi-obscure 2017 listicle — used in reference to 2014 onwards, and then again in a couple of tweets referring to 2019 — but it never really caught on, I guess.)

what's refreshing about Keanu, and what's made this whole undertaking rather rewarding so far (despite the number of almost-but-not-quite-good movies I've made myself sit through) is that he's always, you know, very Keanu. what I mean by that is: there's a little bit of almost every Keanu character in almost every other Keanu character. even when he's playing about as against type as he's ever played in My Own Private Idaho (1991), as (what Gus Van Sant meant to be) the Prince Hal of the Pacific Northwest — the very rich, occasionally cruel, and aptly named Scott Favor — he finds it in his character to shove a bunch of sandwiches in a groggy River Phoenix's face, and it works. "look, Mike!" he says, far more cheerfully than any other character says any other line of dialogue in this film. "SANDWICHES!"

(sadly, I can't find a clip of this, so you'll just have to watch the whole movie — the real star of which is not Keanu but River Phoenix. here's the most heartbreaking scene.)

"SANDWICHES!" you can hear Ted Logan (Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, 1989) saying it, you can hear Neo (The Matrix, duh, 1999) saying it, you can hear Matt (River's Edge, 1986) saying it. you can hear Bob Arctor (A Scanner Darkly, 2004) saying it, although maybe he's not referring to actual sandwiches. you can even hear Donaka (Man of Tai Chi, 2013) saying it with a more sinister inflection. we might imagine that John Wick (uh, John Wick, 2014) said it before his wife died. Julian (Something's Gotta Give, 2003) probably said it to Diane Keaton's character, just as Chris (The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, 2009) probably said it to Robin Wright's character. if you ask me, Johnny Utah's "I AM AN EFF BEE EYE AGENT" line (Point Break, 1991) is contained somewhere in there, too, and of course the "I WANT ROOM SERVICE!" speech (Johnny Mnemonic, 1995) has the same energy — or the same lack of energy, really, the weirdly disarming stoner simplicity. perhaps this is why people have always said that Keanu's a bad actor; although it should be said that of late these "people" have disappeared into the woodworks or maybe they've just changed their minds. I was one of them when I first watched The Matrix, nearly a decade ago. a quick Facebook Messenger search for the film has me telling a friend that it's "such a good movie BUT Keanu's a bad actor." I wonder how much of my own opinion — and everyone else's opinion — of Keanu's acting was shaped by other people saying he was a bad actor, like, as a meme? because of his awful English accent (Bram Stoker's Dracula, 1994), because of his nearly-as-bad Southern accent (The Devil's Advocate, 1997)? because of whatever on Earth was going on with his character in Much Ado About Nothing (1993)? my Messenger search unfortunately turns up nothing that might either prove or disprove any of this; all I know is that I had no idea what "good acting" meant when I was 13.

I leave you with this scene from Johnny Mnemonic, in which Keanu (as the titular Johnny) accesses THE INTERNET in 2021!!!

early-november things

the temptation to not vote is massive when every other person on your feed threatens to end their friendships with all those who don't vote. (this includes a number of people I know, and also minor Kardashian-adjacent Steph Shep.) I'm not sure I want to be friends with someone who doesn't think to phrase their statement as "please vote for this candidate if you can" — who doesn't realize that the "simple" act of voting is more difficult for so many than it should be, and importantly, that it cannot in itself change anything for the better. (why not threaten to end your friendships with all those who vote for, like, Ted Cruz? I'm not saying that you should do that — maybe just don't post anything??? — but let's all stop pretending that we don't have strongly-held political opinions.)

(here's a piece re: Obama's "don't boo, vote" variation on this.)

anyway, I did vote, and all I'm going to say about any of it is that I would like those clamoring for a Beto O'Rourke presidential run to sit down and think a little harder about what it is, exactly, that they're proposing. it's a bad idea!!!

the discourse of virtue, cont'd

An advertisement, made by one William Dodge, appearing in the supplement to the Dec. 20, 1773 issue of the Boston Gazette:

Whereas Elizabeth DODGE the wife of me the Subscriber has refused to live with me; and I having paid for her Board as long as I am able, consistent with Reason or my Interest; — I do hereby forbid all Persons from Entertaining, Harboring, or Trusting the said Elizabeth on my Accompt; and I hereby declare I will pay no Debt she shall contract from the Date hereof.

the discourse of virtue

Regarding the proper installation and care of the mulberry tree — if you consider yourself a "public-spirited" citizen, you'll plant one immediately after reading this. For those looking to go the extra mile in expressing their republican virtue: you'll encourage your wives to drop whatever it is they do all day in favor of raising silkworms. From the Pennsylvania Gazette, reprinted in the Boston News-Letter of March 8, 1770 (spelling preserved, line breaks mine):

Within two Years last past, several Persons have raised Silk Worms within this and the neighbouring Provinces, and from their Success, we have great Hopes that it may be made a staple Commodity with us, for the Climate has agreed remarkably well with the Worm hitherto; our Summers are long enough to afford two Crops; the native Mulberry of this Country, is as good as any other to feed the Worm; the Silk which has been raised here, is of the best Quality; the Management of the Worm no ways difficult, and a Woman can earn more at raising Silk, than any other Business in the same Time.

But unless we have Mulberry Trees for to feed the Worms, the Culture of Silk cannot be carried on to any great Extent; and as many People might be willing to promote it by encreasing the Quantity of Mulberry Trees, provided they thought of it in a suitable Season; therefore this is to advertise all such, that the most favourable Time to propagate them is now approaching; and it is to be hoped, that every public spirited Person will use their Endeavours for that Purpose; the Expence of which will be small, the Trouble and Risque but little, and the Advantages many, although they should not be used for the Purpose of raising Silk; for the Mulberry is very good to feed and fatten Poultry, and the Wood, for many Uses, is equal to any that grows, especially for Ship-building, and it is said to be as durable as red Cedar, in Posts, &c. when full grown. 

2017: mixed media

I can't believe the last thing I posted on this blog was about Ezra Koenig! (Maybe some of you have forgotten who he is, given that he hardly tweets at all anymore. I don't blame you.)

Last year, I said I'd do away with reading challenges, and so I have. I've also done away with Goodreads ratings, for the most part: there's something absurd, isn't there, in asking the present-day reading population to rate Common Sense — for instance — on a scale of one to five. (It's currently at 3.97, for those wondering. One one-star review by a "Parentheses Enthusiast" remarks that the pamphlet is "DRY. DRIER THAN AN ANCIENT RAISIN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ATACAMA DESERT.") But here are five books I read in the past year that I would have rated four or five stars, I suppose, and that you might feel similarly about:

5. THE SHEPHERD'S LIFE (James Rebanks)
One of the first things I saw when I arrived in England last May, apart from the inside of the Manchester airport, was a group of sheep grazing on a highway median. That set the tone for the next few months, during which I developed a surprising affinity for sheep of all stripes; I picked this book up in the same airport on my way home. Rebanks writes of his childhood (and adulthood) spent as a shepherd in the Lake District, so there are no highway medians here, but it's no less interesting for it. The Shepherd's Life is at once memoir and cultural history (its subtitle, in some editions, is A People's History of the Lake District). It is better as the latter than as the former, although Rebanks's account of his journey from his sheep to Oxford to London and (finally) back to his sheep is necessary — it shows us that he's the best-placed person to do what he does in this book, which is to advance a critique of capitalist society from the point of view of a pre-industrial profession. I don't know if that's what Rebanks intended, exactly, but I do think that's what makes this book so valuable.

#4 through #1, under the cut.

I think a lot about GRIT, and even more about the dollar number of Angela Duckworth's fee every time she is invited to tell some of the highest-paid people in the country how they can become even more highly-paid; the (unintended, I think, I hope) implication is that they've gotten where they are because of something inside them. they have grit, and others don't.

do you think we've lost something by turning psychology into a numbers game? "Luria had the right idea," I remember texting my mother, soon after (perhaps during, in which case: she scolded me for texting during class) the guest lecture during which I got this impression; during which Angela Duckworth showed us (with the best of intentions) that academic research, too, can get you to Wall Street. I don't really take issue with Duckworth herself. she acknowledges the many limitations of grit, especially as "measured" by a questionnaire; she has discussed her issues with the very idea of "measurement," re: what ought and ought not to be "measurable." opening a lecture to an Intro to Psych class with a reference to the career path that (one could be forgiven for assuming) so many in the ultra-high-capacity auditorium might aspire to — maybe it was an attempt to meet students where they were at. the problem lies with those who interpret concepts like grit for their own benefit, which is surely how Duckworth ended up talking to a bunch of investment bankers in the first place.

all this is to say that I finished The Mismeasure of Man recently and I'm growing more and more suspicious of numbers. they'll provide an almost transcendental backing for anything!