Monday, September 17, 2018

Hopper at 51



A metaphor:



“The Good Brahmin” by Voltaire

In my travels I once happened to meet with an aged Brahmin. “I wish,” said the Brahmin to me one day, “I had never been born!”

“Why so?” said I.

“Because,” replied he, “I have been studying these forty years, and I find it has been so much time lost. While I teach others I know nothing myself. The sense of my condition is so humiliating, it makes all things so distasteful to me, that life has become a burden. I have been born, and I exist in time, without knowing what time is. I am placed, as our wise men say, in the confines between two eternities, and yet I have no idea of eternity. I am composed of matter, I think, but have never been able to satisfy myself what it is that produces thought. I even am ignorant whether my understanding is a simple faculty I possess, like that of walking and digesting, or if I think with my head in the same manner as I take hold of a thing with my hands. I am not only thus in the dark with relation to the principles of thought, but the principles of my motions are entirely unknown to me. I do not know why I exist, and yet I am applied to every day for a solution of the enigma. I must return an answer, but can say nothing satisfactory on the subject. I talk a great deal, and when I have done speaking remain confounded and ashamed of what I have said.”

The condition in which I saw this good man gave me real concern. No one could be more rational, no one more open and honest. It appeared to me that the force of his understanding and the sensibility of his heart were the causes of his misery.

The same day I had a conversation with an old woman, his neighbor. I asked her if she had ever been unhappy for not understanding how her soul was made. She did not even comprehend my question. She had not, for the briefest moment in her life, had a thought about these subjects with which the good Brahmin had so tormented himself. She believed from the bottom of her heart in the metamorphoses of her god Vishnu, and, provided she could get some of the sacred water of the Ganges in which to make her ablutions, she thought herself the happiest of women.

Struck with the happiness of this poor creature, I returned to my philosopher, whom I thus addressed:

“Are you not ashamed to be thus miserable when, not fifty yards from you, there is an old automaton who thinks of nothing and lives contented?”

“You are right,” he replied. “I have said to myself a thousand times that I should be happy if I were but as ignorant as my old neighbor, and yet it is a happiness I do not desire.”

This reply of the Brahmin made a greater impression on me than any thing that had passed.


Friday, September 14, 2018

Oh Snap Thales!



Thales, the great Greek philosopher, taught that there is no difference between life and death.

“Okay,” said a skeptical and perhaps not-to-devoted a follower, “so why don’t you die then.”

“Because,” replied the unflappable Thales, “it makes no difference.”


(recounted by Paramahansa Yogananda in Autobiography of a Yogi, chapter 33)


Wednesday, September 12, 2018

Of Atheism



“A little philosophy inclineth a man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.”

- Francis Bacon, Essays, “Of Atheism”

Just came across this quote last night; it’s worth committing to memory. It might even serve as this blog’s motto, were I so inclined and had a bit more enthusiasm, setting it up to alternate with “The proper study of mankind is books” every other day. We’ll see.

Still, it makes sense to me. I did indeed travel that road summed up in that sentence, many many years ago.

The princes of the Church may fail us, but the Truth never shall.

Also brings to mind a quote from Archbishop Fulton Sheen:

“There are not a hundred people in America who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions of people who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church – which is, of course, quite a different thing.”


Friday, September 7, 2018

Hopper’s Reading Bucket List, Part II



Continuing yesterday’s “bucket list” of books to read before I die –


Non-Fiction


The Republic (Plato)

* The origin of Philosophy, the root of the great tree trunk, the germ in the seed. “All of Philosophy is but a footnote to Plato,” as Whitehead wrote. I’ve read the Dialogues ages ago for a night school class, but never The Republic, save for the Cave Allegory in a Philosophy class.


Being and Nothingness (Sartre) and/or Being and Time (Heidegger)

* Why did Mallory attempt to climb Everest? Because it’s there, he said. Similarly, these mountains to BEING are there, great hefty cinder blocks of dense shifting prose, with lots lost in translation. I want to read them because they are. They exist. They have Being. They mock me.


Histories by Herodotus / History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides

 * These appeal to my interest in military history, and my interest in the ancient world. Well, any world besides this one, c. 2018. I started them both years ago during hot summers, and though I never got more than a few chapters into either, I still associate them to post-workout walks under scorching suns.


Poems by Shelley / Byron / Keats / Tennyson

* For each of these great poets I have a large volume, but I’ve only read a handful of poems from any. “Prometheus Unbound” was the longest, from Shelley, at around 10 pages. And I carefully read it, studied it, re-read it, savored it like they tell you at Poetry School. And you know what? I think I caught a glimpse into a brighter, wondrous world. A glimpse, mind you, but I found it to be quite enticing.


Paradise Lost (Milton)

* Supernatural poetry. This deserves a long, lasting look, with several re-reads.


On the Road (Kerouac)

* Not sure why this appeals to me. Maybe it’s a ZFG attitude that is increasingly, though in a very tiny way, creeping into my life. Oh to be young again, without the mortgage and debt and life insurance and 401(k) plans! Though I never hitchhiked across the country, there were a few years, 1986 to 89 or 90, where, had I the balls, I could radically change my life. I guess that’s the appeal. But I really don’t know much about the book.


The Bible – in Latin

* Yep. In Latin. I have a Latin bible. I also have a very, very sparse working knowledge of Latin. So I’d have to preface this bucket list entry with a semester of Latin 102. You may think me strange, but the thought of that gets me more excited than what I normally do 40 hours a week for a pay check.


Lincoln: The War Years (Sandburg)

* The poet of “Grass” biographs Lincoln. Two Americans of old of a like of which can never exist again. The possibilities here, it seems to me, are transcendent.


Gödel, Escher, Bach (Hofstadter)

* Want to read this because, like Infinite Jest, this seems to be on everyone’s list. I did once read about 75 pages of it, and I’m not sure I agree with Hofstadter’s claim we’re all closed loops (whatever those are, I forget), but I’m always up to having my mind non-chemically altered.


Reclaiming History (Bugliosi)

* A prosecutor destroys point-by-infinitesimal-point the conspiracist’s case in the JFK assassination. Read a hundred-page section and it, along with Posner’s Case Closed, thoroughly convinced me of the Lone Gunman theory. Would love the leisure to read the entire 1,200 page thing one day.


Need to complete:


The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

* 400 pages in, 500 to go; plus I’d like to do a re-read with a pen and notebook handy.


Shelby Foote’s Civil War trilogy

* One volume down, two to go. Problem is, with all its rich detail, each volume will take about six weeks to get through …


Churchill’s six-volume World War II memoir

* One down, five to go (and of the five, the last two stare balefully down from a shelf at me every day)


* * * * * * *


By a rough estimate, I think the fiction and nonfiction bucket list books total to around 35,000 pages. Should be doable; at a leisurely pace of 20 pages a day, that’ll take me just shy of five years …


Thursday, September 6, 2018

Hopper’s Reading Bucket List, Part I



Here’s my bucket list. These are the works I want to read before I die. However, they all will require an above-and-beyond amount of either time, energy, motivation, or some such combination, which I generally don’t have. You know, the whole 24/7 marriage / raising children / working thing. Plus I already do read anywhere from forty to sixty books cover-to-cover a year, and that pretty much zaps up all the free time I have.

Yet something deep down inside me lifts these books up as something special. Thus, the reading bucket list. If I’m blessed with a long retirement, or if I win the lottery or gain an inheritance from a long-lost granduncle, I’d tackle it immediately. But right now, they all sit on my idealized book shelf, my fantasy on-deck circle. I will get to them, though, somewhere down the road, and that’s a promise.


Fiction


The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky)

* Both long reside at the acknowledged pinnacle of literature. Have the first in a beautiful hardcover with gold edging all ready to go, need the second. Wrestling with morality and amorality – should be quite instructive in our generally ignorant, emotionalist times.


The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Dickens)

* A Dickensian murder mystery – where the author died before the final chapter was written! This has intrigued me for years. (Plus, superior author Dan Simmons has wrote his own treatment on the book – what really was going on when Dickens wrote it. Might be a good parallel read.)


Infinite Jest (Wallace)

* Everyone loves David Foster Wallace (including me, based solely on the one book of his I’ve read), who sadly lost his battle with mental illness. This book is his masterpiece and is on all the lists of “most difficult” reads out there. I read a few chapters a few years ago, but was too busy job seeking to give it the attention it deserved.


The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain)

* Never read it, feel I should. Simple as that.


Robinson Crusoe (Dafoe)

* Same reason as Huck Finn. Plus, the whole “stuck on a desert island” theme appeals to me.


The Maltese Falcon (Hammett)

* Want to read it simply because it is probably the most famous noir detective novel ever written, the Platonic Form, in fact, of the noir detective novel. Sam Spade, and all. And I read in black and white.


Gravity’s Rainbow (Pynchon)

* The prospect of an intricate, snaking plotline in any novel gets my immediate attention. Throw in some general weirdness and, perhaps, a deep, enigmatic riddle, and I’m hooked. Read his Crying of Lot 49 and enjoyed it. Read about 100 pages of GR ten or twelve years ago, but I think I want to read the thing in its entirety.


The History of Middle-earth (Tolkien)

* During the 80s and early 90s, Christopher Tolkien released twelve volumes – twelve! – of his father’s unpublished stories, fragments, notes, and whatnot, further fleshing out the universe of Middle-earth. I read Unfinished Tales, which, I think, is unofficially volume one, but I’d have to check on that. Each volume is a couple hundred pages and covers a specific topic in general ways. I must read it all!


Need to complete:


The plays of Shakespeare

* 11 down, 26 to go …


[Non-fiction tomorrow …]


Wednesday, September 5, 2018

Nike



Shoes for losers.

My family goes through seven or eight pairs of sneakers and cleats a year. That’s about $500. Every year. My girls have been playing sports for about eight years now, so we’re talking about $4,000. In sneakers and soccer cleats.

And that’s not to mention other sports gear. Now, the Mrs. is the one who buys all that stuff (and buy them she does), so I could be wildly off the mark with an estimate of, oh, say $125 in additional sweatshirts and workout clothes and the like. And that’s being very conservative.

Now we’re talking $625 a year, or a cool $5,000 since 2010.

No more.

We’ve officially switched to Adidas.

For everything. And if Adidas doesn’t make what Nike previously supplied us, we’ll find someone else to purchase from.

Nike.

Shoes for losers.