Walt O’Bryan had just finished a three-day conference on education theory in Anaheim that was long on theory and short on substance, but he didn’t care. The only reason he attended was to get away from home for awhile and take in L.A. culture. It was always good to look around a little and see what else the world had to offer. On Saturday morning after most of the other
Dennis woke up lying face-first in a field at noon. His car sat twenty feet away with the driver’s door open, engine running, and headlights on. A half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels stood upright on the ground directly between him and the car, and the Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime” was playing on the radio. He couldn’t remember how he had gotten there, nor could he remember what he
Whatever concept an artist imagines Is a reflection of a latent form that lies within A block of marble; the hand alone, Guided by the intellect, can give it form. from Michelangelo’s Sonnet 15 The “reflection of a latent form” Michelangelo characterizes in his poem has inspired debate among artists, aesthetes, and philosophers for thousands of years, with little resolution. A procession of thinkers from Homer on have claimed that the
It’s easy enough to argue that revenge in its most ethical manifestation serves as a necessary form of retributive justice. Sometimes, threats and the damage done by others must be punished or eradicated through moral and physical correctives. In this regard, revenge stands as an essential survival skill for individuals and groups alike. At a subtler level, successfully prosecuted acts of revenge usually require intricate behavioral patterns that help us
Given that I was seven years old in 1968, I didn’t want to hear about college students dropping acid and prancing around nude in public places, or Muhammad Ali shouting, “I ain’t got no beef with them Viet Cong!” or the Soviet menace, or Richard Nixon, or Jacqueline Lee Bouvier, or Herman Hesse, or the Chicago riots, or burning bras, or Neo-Realist cinema, or anything else painful, incendiary, ugly, or
Everything is an imposed illusion, an undisclosed projection, observed by unwitting players seeking knowledge just beyond perception. The beautiful things translate, perched on a rocky ledge at sunset, watching the valley turn to gold.
