Unpopular narratives and dating

I'm struck, entering the dating scene in my 50's, that I'm a quirky fellow.

I had a dream that I was explaining my undergraduate philosophy experience to a teacher as I went for a PhD. I woke up and was disappointed because I couldn't finish my circumstantial narrative.

But I don't like American philosophy, though I fought it mightily when I was trying to get into it. I'm more partial to a wider exploration of life's questions that includes literature and psychology.

I read through Shakespeare recently and I've started on a second run through. I'm into Thomas Pynchon.

Meanwhile I'm looking through dating profiles where she likes the beach, being treated like a lady, honesty and animal lovers. I'm pretty sure I've missed the happiness boat. That's fine, meaningful was what I was shooting for. But it's an unpopular narrative.

My son has the same problem. He's got all kinds of ideas about video games and movies. I have sympathy for the unpopular narrative, makes me an OK listener. But my son has become a laconic teenager.

There's a running joke in sitcoms where a narcissist points out that he doesn't think his friends are reading his blog. I don't inflict my friends in such a way. I know these are blog thoughts.

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Manet and Degas

Brilliant video explaining the exhibit. Go to the Met and see the exhibit! It's really quite special. In the last gallery the painting this sketch is based off of, of the execution of a Mexican president. The painting has been cut into sections, and the surviving Degas has reassembled them. NY Times review

movie versus book

I'm watching the movie a second time, and I'm halfway through the book. Among the movie's differences from the book. Sortilege starts off narrating. The movie doesn't have the school bell for the phone either, just a regular ring. It's really weird the way Doc shouts when he sees the photo of Amethyst as a baby. I guess it's to dramatize the negative impact of being pregnant and using, but the child we see looks pretty healthy. The child doesn't huff out because they're boring like she did in the book. Superficially The Big Lebowski and Inherent Vice are similar but it's a completely different style of narrative. The Coen brothers are amazing, they have a very witty movie that I have loved for a long time. Pynchon is a whole other realm of fiction, and this conversion is fairly faithful, taking out the best lines and making it more compact. The audio book is 15 hours, the movie is 2 hours. Anyway, I like the different movies for different reasons. T...

Introduction

Robert B. Palmer's introduction to his translation of Walter F. Otto's Dionysus: Myth and Cult (p. ix-xi) Gods of Hellas, gods of Hellas, Can ye listen in your silence? Can your mystic voices tell us Where ye hide? In floating islands, With a wind that evermore Keeps you out of sight of shore? Pan, Pan is dead. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING The Dead Pan W H E N Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote these lines which sound so pessimistic and so limited to any lover of the beauty and truth of Greek mythology, she had in mind a famous passage out of Plutarch's De Oraculorum defectu {Mor. 419 A-E) in which it was reported on good authority that Pan had died. But let Plutarch tell the story (Philip is speaking): As for death among such beings [i.e., deities], I have heard the words of a man who was not a fool nor an impostor. The father of...

Motley Kamuka

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