9.15.2021 – be stranger, more

be stranger, more
dubitable than daylight
allowed us to think

Adapted from the book, The Art of Travel (2002, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton, and the passage:

I began word-painting.

Descriptive passages came most readily: the offices were tall; the top of one tower was like a pyramid; it had ruby-red lights on its side; the sky was not black but an orangey-yellow.

But because such a factual description seemed of little help to me in pinning down why I found the scene so impressive, I attempted to analyse its beauty in more psychological terms.

The power of the scene appeared to be located in the effect of the night and of the fog on the towers.

Night drew attention to facets of the offices that were submerged in the day.

Lit by the sun, the offices could seem normal, repelling questions as effectively as their windows repelled glances.

But night upset this claim to normality, it allowed one to see inside and wonder at how strange, frightening and admirable they were.

The offices embodied order and cooperation among thousands, and at the same time regimentation and tedium.

A bureaucratic vision of seriousness was undermined, or at least questioned, by the night.

One wondered in the darkness what the flipcharts and office terminals were for: not that they were redundant, just that they might be stranger and more dubitable than daylight had allowed us to think.

Adapted from the book, The Art of Travel (2002, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton.

According to the website, GOOD READS, Any Baedeker will tell us where we ought to travel, but only Alain de Botton will tell us how and why.

As I said in the section on Architecture , what I find irresistible in reading Mr. de Botton is his use of language.

I get the feeling that if you made a spread sheet of all the words, adverbs and adjectives used by Mr. de Botton, you just might find that he used each word just once.

Neat trick in writing a book.

If I knew how to do that, hey, I would.

9.14.2021 – sense viscerally

sense viscerally
vastness and diversity
of humanity

Adapted from the book, A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary (2009, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton, and the passage:

Entry into the vast space of the departures hall heralded the opportunity, characteristic in the transport nodes of the modern world, to observe people with discretion, to forget oneself in a sea of otherness and to let the imagination loose on the limitless supply of fragmentary stories provided by the eye and ear. The mighty steel bracing of the airport’s ceiling recalled the scaffolding of the great nineteenth-century railway stations, and evoked the sense of awe – suggested in paintings such as Monet’s Gare Saint-Lazare – that must have been experienced by the first crowds to step inside these lightfilled, iron-limbed halls pullulating with strangers, buildings that enabled a person to sense viscerally, rather than just grasp intellectually, the vastness and diversity of humanity.

Part of the series of Haiku inspired by from A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary (2009, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton. I discovered this book entirely by accident. When searching for books online, I will use the term ‘collections’ and see what turns up. I figure that someone who has taken the time to gather together the etexts of any one author to create a collected works folder is enough for me to see what this author might be all about.

In this case I came across the writing of Alain de Botton. I enjoyed his use of language very much. Much of the words he strings together lend themselves to what I do.

As for his book, I recommend it very much though written in 2009, it misses the added layer of travel under covid but still the picture of the modern airport is worth the read.

9.13.2021 – We learn to defend

We learn to defend
or attack a concept or
an ethical stance

We learn to defend of attack.

We know what’s right and what’s is wrong.

By some innate sense?

Or by what we learn?

Or by what we are taught?

And still call it ethics?

Adapted from the book, The Architecture of Happiness (2009, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton, and the passage:

Arguments about what is beautiful emerge as no easier to resolve, but then again no harder, than disputes about what is wise or right. We can learn to defend or attack a concept of beauty in the same way we might defend or attack a legal position or an ethical stance. We can understand, and publically explain, why we believe a building to be desirable or offensive on the basis of the things it talks to us about.

According the The New York Review of Books, this is “A perceptive, thoughtful, original, and richly illustrated exercise in the dramatic personification of buildings of all sorts.”

What I find irrestible in reading Mr. de Botton is his use of language.

I get the feeling that if you made a spread sheet of all the words, adverbs and adjectives used by Mr. de Botton, you just might find that he used each word just once.

Neat trick in writing a book.

If I knew how to do that, I would.

9.12.2021 – studying with bit

studying with bit
more imagination gave weight
seldom able sort

Adapted from the book, A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary (2009, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton, and the passage:

But the writer’s desk was at heart an open invitation to users of the terminal to begin studying their setting with a bit more imagination and attention, to give weight to the feelings that airports provoke, but which we are seldom able to sort through or elaborate upon in the anxiety of making our way to the gate.

In this case I came across the writing of Alain de Botton. I enjoyed his use of language very much. Much of the words he strings together lend themselves to what I do.

As for his book, I recommend it very much though written in 2009, it misses the added layer of travel under covid but still the picture of the modern airport is worth the read.

9.11.2021 – history calling

history calling
nine one one nine eleven
wake up hangover

Conspiracy theory or not, the fact that the numbers in 9/11 and 911 has to be one of the oddest, cruelest and yet most perfect coincidences in history.

For me, it supersedes the coincidence that the abbreviation for the United States is US.

E pluibus unum and all that all at once.

It has been 20 years since 9/11.

It was the great chronicler of the American Scene, Tom Wolfe, (About whom, William F. Buckley Jr., writing in National Review, said, “he can do more things with words than anyone else.”) who wrote that after the excesses of the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, the first two decades of the 21st century would be one massive hangover.

I am having trouble this morning tracking down the exact quote.

When I find it, I will update this essay.

I put it to you that the idea of a 20 year hangover starting in the year 2000 to be pitch perfect spot on for the way this century has started.

The idea that 9/11/2001 was the wake call has some worth to it.

That loud ringing phone wake up call when you start your day with a headachy hangover.

Now, 20 years later, maybe its time to get out of bed, rub our head, drink a glass of icy cold water then go for long walk on a 90 degree 90% humidity day and sweat it all out.

As Mr. Lincoln said, “As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.

It is not “can any of us imagine better?” but, “can we all do better?”

We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.“

I just have to wonder, how did Mr. Lincoln get so smart?