“Cogito ergo sum.”

René Descartes. Born March 31, 1596, La Haye. Died February 11, 1650, Stockholm.

Revelation of the day: Descartes was a lawyer (Poitiers, Class of 1616).

“Now that I have once, in some measure, made proof of the opinions of men regarding my work, I again undertake to treat of God and the human soul, and at the same time to discuss the principles of the entire First Philosophy, without, however, expecting any commendation from the crowd of my endeavors, or a wide circle of readers.”

Scratchpost (an occasional diary): Operatic Millinery

Weekend Update: Got tickets to Das Rheingold at the Met.
Delighted to make NYC visit to see the first portion of The Ring.

Highlight of the performance (offstage): Several very senior ladies in the audience, who arrived at the opera house a la Brunnhilde. Sporting golden helmets with great big horns on each side.

What a hoot!
Love the ladies who take their Wagner with such whimsy.

"If any of you are secret poets, the best way to break into print is to run for the presidency"

COURAGE AFTER SIXTY
by Eugene McCarthy, born March 29, 1916 Watkins, Minnesota. Died December10, 2005, Washington D.C.

Now it is certain.
There is no magic stone.
No secret to be found.
One must go
With the mind's winnowed learning.
No more than the child's handhold
On the willows bending over the lake,
On the sumac roots at the cliff edge.
Ignorance is checked,
Betrayals scratched.
The coat has been hung on the peg,
The cigar laid on the table edge,
The cue chosen and chalked,
The balls set for the final break.
All cards drawn,
All bets called.
The dice, warm as blood in the hand,
Shaken for the last cast.
The glove has been thrown to the ground,
The last choice of weapons made.

“I had a job with a pompous-sounding title . . ."

“I had a job with a pompous-sounding title, a modest salary, duties as a plagiarist, and flexible working hours. …. My editorial staff was limited to Pascual, a youngster who slicked down his hair with quantities of brilliantine and loved catastrophes.”

from Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa, born March 28, 1936

"I will build a cloud-castle. It shall shine all over the North. "

"I will build a cloud-castle.
It shall shine all over the North.
It shall have two wings: one little and one great.
The great wing shall shelter a deathless poet;
the little wing shall serve as a young girl's bower."

from “Building Plans” –a poem by Henrik Ibsen (published in 1858, about 35 years before he created The Master Builder)

Henrik Ibsen, March 27, 1828 – May 23, 1906

"I know myself, but that is all"

. . . from This Side of Paradise, by Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, published March 26, 1920 Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York




"... Well this side of Paradise!...
There's little comfort in the wise."
--Rupert Brooke

"The sun was a huge red ball like an elevated Host"

“The sun was a huge red ball like an elevated Host drenched in blood and when it sank out of sight, it left a line in the sky like a red clay road hanging over the trees.”
from “A Temple of the Holy Ghost” by Mary Flannery O'Connor (March 25 1925 – August 3 1964

A rushing together . . . Of the raisins of wrath

To summarize the past by theft and allusion
With a parasong a palimpsest
A manuscreed writ over
A graph of consciousness at best
A consciousness of felt life
A rushing together
Of the raisins of wrath
Of living and dying
The laughter and forgetting
The maze and amaze of life.

from Americus Book I, by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, born March 24, 1919, Yonkers

"If this be treason, then make the most of it."

"There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free ... we must fight! ... Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace — but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! ... Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

Patrick Henry, in the Virginia House of Burgesses, March 23, 1775

Remember the 1340s? We were doing a dance called the Catapult.

Remember the 1340s? We were doing a dance called the Catapult.
You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade,
and I was draped in one of those capes that were popular,
the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.
Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,
and at night we would play a game called “Find the Cow.”
Everything was hand-lettered then, not like today.

from "Nostalgia" by Billy Collins, born March 22, 1941

Jack Kerouac - born March 12, 1922, Lenox, Massachusetts

"I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won't bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary split-up and my feeling that everything was dead. With the coming of Dean Moriarty began the part of my life you could call my life on the road. Before that I'd often dreamed of going West to see the country, always vaguely planning and never taking off. Dean is the perfect guy for the road because he actually was born on the road, when his parents were passing through Salt Lake City in 1926, in a jalopy, on their way to Los Angeles."
. . . from On the Road

"It was a lovely village where no one was over 30 years of age, and no one died."

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

- from Cien Años de Soledad, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, born on March 6, 1928