I am not gifted with the virtues of Capricorn, the astrological sign we are smack in the middle of. Capricorn is careful and persistent, like a mountain goat picking its way along a steep, narrow path.
Like, at their best...
*quickly looks up Famous Capricorns*
...here we go...
like Louis Pasteur (who quite rightly said, "in the field of observation, chance favors the prepared mind").
[I see Stalin and Nixon were both born when the Sun was in Capricorn too. They demonstrate another classic quality of Capricorn: a lack of humor. Though not normally seen as a virtue, you can see how a goat wouldn't want to collapse in laughter on a mountain ledge.]
I see my lack of steadfastness in the half-assed way I've been pursuing the 365 Days self-portrait project, which I started after my birthday last March. I grew bored and annoyed with it, so I've only done a bit here, a bit there, and I've bent the rules.
But, after all, we do our best when we work with our own virtues, not when we force ourselves to mimic others.
I wish, in fact, I'd bent more of the rules sooner--especially the rule that you must include part of your body in your self-portrait.
Hooey to that, I finally say. It's my project, and I should have been including shots of the books beside my bed all along.
So, here're three day's worth, started on January 9, 2009
Some of the titles, from left to right:
Ode magazine, "for intelligent optimists" (current issue, bought for 25 cents at the library used-books store)
Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s (includes Elaine May & Mike Nichols)
Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance (this goes way beyond the level of inquiry my Netherlands book calls for; reading it for my own interest)
Ardent Spirits: Leaving Home, Coming Back, by Reynolds Price. A mildly interesting memoir of RP's time in Oxford in the 1950s, and his first years teaching at Duke and publishing his first novel.
Naive. Super by Erlend Loe, translated from the Norwegian. From Annika, in Sweden. Funny. The hero, a young man going through an existential crisis, likes to write lists. Here's one of them.
Like, at their best...
*quickly looks up Famous Capricorns*
...here we go...
like Louis Pasteur (who quite rightly said, "in the field of observation, chance favors the prepared mind").
[I see Stalin and Nixon were both born when the Sun was in Capricorn too. They demonstrate another classic quality of Capricorn: a lack of humor. Though not normally seen as a virtue, you can see how a goat wouldn't want to collapse in laughter on a mountain ledge.]
I see my lack of steadfastness in the half-assed way I've been pursuing the 365 Days self-portrait project, which I started after my birthday last March. I grew bored and annoyed with it, so I've only done a bit here, a bit there, and I've bent the rules.
But, after all, we do our best when we work with our own virtues, not when we force ourselves to mimic others.
I wish, in fact, I'd bent more of the rules sooner--especially the rule that you must include part of your body in your self-portrait.
Hooey to that, I finally say. It's my project, and I should have been including shots of the books beside my bed all along.
So, here're three day's worth, started on January 9, 2009
Some of the titles, from left to right:
Ode magazine, "for intelligent optimists" (current issue, bought for 25 cents at the library used-books store)
Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s (includes Elaine May & Mike Nichols)
Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance (this goes way beyond the level of inquiry my Netherlands book calls for; reading it for my own interest)
Ardent Spirits: Leaving Home, Coming Back, by Reynolds Price. A mildly interesting memoir of RP's time in Oxford in the 1950s, and his first years teaching at Duke and publishing his first novel.
Naive. Super by Erlend Loe, translated from the Norwegian. From Annika, in Sweden. Funny. The hero, a young man going through an existential crisis, likes to write lists. Here's one of them.
This is what I don't have:
-Plans
-Enthusiasm
-A girlfriend
-The sense that things fit together and everything will be all right in the end
-A winning personality
-A watch
