The last five minutes, an epitaph, eternity

Nada te turbe,                              Let nothing disturb you,                                                    
Nada te espante,                          Let nothing frighten you ,   
todo se pasa,                                 all things are passing, 

Dios no se muda;                         God does not move;
la paciencia                                  patience

todo lo alcanza;                          achieves everything;
quien a Dios tiene                       one who has God
nada le falta:                               lacks nothing.
Sólo Dios basta.                         Only God is enough.

                         -Santa Teresa de Ávila (1515-1558)

Bumper Stickers

Maimonides is my copilot.

Spinoza is my BFF.

Nietszche is my bunkmate.

Kafka is my therapy partner.

Foucault is my breakfast date.

Benjamin is my sounding board.  He is my heart.

Beatrice

                                                 Così  orai; e quella, sì lontana

                                                 come parea, sorrise e riguardommi;

                                                 poi si tornò a l’etterna fontana.

                                                 Thus I implored; and she, so far away,

                                                 Smiled, as it seemed, and looked once more at me;

                                                 Then unto the eternal fountain turned.

                                          

                                                                                Dante Alighieri 

                                                                                The Divine Comedy, Canto XXXI  

We are all climbing

William Blake: Jacob's Ladder

José de Ribera: El Sueño de Jacob

I'd toss it yonder like a rind

She lived this poem, growing in a straight line, upwards bent.

It cannot be that it was she on whom the tempests fell at night.

I miss her.

I'll light a cigarette.  I'll listen to Bach's Adagio.  It pumps juice into the grape.

Fra Angelico: The Annunciation

Yes, tea and the Adagio while I draw a bath.  

A network of uncertainties

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez: Las Meninas

No gaze is stable, or rather, in the neutral furrow of the gaze piercing at a right angle through the canvas, subject and object, the spectator and the model, reverse their roles to infinity. 

                                                                        -Foucault, The Order of Things

             Diagram of Foucault's Las Meninas courtesy of http://twitter.com/naxos

Ps. 102:7

                                We defy augury: there's a special
                                providence in the fall of a sparrow.  If it be now,
                               'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be
                               now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the
                               readiness is all.

                                                                           Hamlet, Act V, Sc. II

 

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes: Don Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuñiga