both diabolic
love and the unearthly hate
of the mysteries

A voice! a voice!

It rang deep to the very last.

It survived his strength to hide in the magnificent folds of eloquence the barren darkness of his heart.

Oh, he struggled! he struggled!

The wastes of his weary brain were haunted by shadowy images now — images of wealth and fame revolving obsequiously round his unextinguishable gift of noble and lofty expression.

My Intended, my station, my career, my ideas—these were the subjects for the occasional utterances of elevated sentiments.

The shade of the original Kurtz frequented the bedside of the hollow sham, whose fate it was to be buried presently in the mould of primeval earth.

But both the diabolic love and the unearthly hate of the mysteries it had penetrated fought for the possession of that soul satiated with primitive emotions, avid of lying fame, of sham distinction, of all the appearances of success and power.

From Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

Both the diabolic love and the unearthly hate of the mysteries.

Penetrated and fought for the possession of that soul satiated with those primitive emotions.

Lying fame.

Sham distinction.

All the appearances of success and power.

Oh, he struggled! he struggled!

It rang deep to the very last.

That unextinguishable gift of noble and lofty expression.

To drag Mr. Thoreau into it, that life of quiet desperation.

All much on my mind of late.

So many journey alone into the heart of darkness.

Some find their way back.

Their way back home.

Some do find their way back home.

Some get to find their way back home.

The lucky ones.

bear clear evidence
of craftsmanship honed for more
than a century

From Legacy Pizza: Naples vs. N.Y.C. as it appeared in Hannah Goldfield’s feature, Tables for Two, in the New Yorker, 2/27/2023.

Ms. Goldfield writes:

The margherita and the marinara are successful imports, cooked here in a domed brick oven, with guidance from a fifth-generation member of the pizzeria’s founding family.

Though the pies are much larger than their Naples counterparts, they bear clear evidence of a craftsmanship honed for more than a century.

This is dough that won’t let you down: incredibly pliable and stretchy, floppy but more than sturdy enough for its toppings (all sourced from Italy), and flavorful to boot, fermented for forty-eight hours, then flash-cooked until speckled with bubbles and char.

The sauce lets the volcanic tomatoes speak for themselves, and the cheese captures the essence of the sweetest, grassiest milk.

The rest, for the most part, is noise.

It turns out that you can have too much of even the most wonderful cheese, as proved by a heavy-handed white pizza and by another topped with pesto, tomatoes, and a large, awkward ball of burrata that reads like TikTok bait.

Salads, including one with shaved artichoke and pistachio, and pastas (spaghetti cacio e pepe, maccheroni Bolognese) might be the best in town if the bar weren’t so high in this particular town; we’re certainly not in need of a Hamburger Italiano.

An attempt at world domination comes, unsurprisingly, at the expense of humble charm.

After Economic Columnists, it is food critics who get to use the best words.

on the other side
of the small space, that small place
on the other side

I enjoyed the writing in the article As Rams imploded, Sean McVay faded away: How they found their way back to each other by Jourdan Rodrigue, very much even with the number of split infinitives in the text.

Split infinitives are my bête noire of grammar checking even though I was told that no one cares anymore about that.

I persist because it is one of the few forms of bad grammar I can identify and it makes me sound smarter or at least smarter than my phone which persists in telling me to turn left out of my parking lot when I need to turn right to get to work.

It was one short combination of words of Ms. Rodrigue’s that caught me eye and said, do something with these words.

That combination of words was “On the other side of the small space.”

It is in the sentence, “Afterward, half of the locker room sat in stunned silence. One offensive lineman wept, covering his face with his hands. On the other side of the small space, star cornerback and team captain Jalen Ramsey vented to reporters about the offense’s inability to close out the game as other defensive players quietly vented to each other.”

On the other side of the small space.

Ken Dryden’s description of the dressing room of the Montreal Canadian’s, in Dryden’s The Game, came to mind.

It has the look and feel of a child’s bedroom. Shin pads, shoulder pads, socks, jocks, gloves, skates, and sweaters lie in twenty little heaps on the floor. Players in various stages of dress move easily about, laughing and shouting in equal measure. It is too big to be intimate, about the size of a large living room, too antiseptic and bright to be cozy. In early morning or late after¬ noon, it appears quite ordinary — fluorescent lights, chrome equipment racks, a red indoor-outdoor carpet, concrete block walls painted white with red and blue trim, a wide gray bench that runs around its borders. Functional, attractive in an institutional sort of way, it is a room that needs people. Only higher, above the chrome racks and near the ceiling, is it clear that this is a dressing room unique to one team.

This was the dressing room in the old Montreal Forum.

When it was torn down, the locker was saved somehow and reconstructed in the National Hockey League Hall of Fame in Toronto.

On the other side of the small space.

It also came to mind that of these small spaces in sports, Football and Basketball use locker rooms.

Hockey has the dressing room.

And Baseball has the clubhouse.

Not wanting to descend in Mr. George Carlin’s Football/Baseball routine but there it is.

Of the clubhouse, in The Boys of Summer, Roger Kahn wrote, “So summer came, tempting and hot, but of all the new scenes what compelled me most strongly was the crowded and drab clubhouse under the right-field grand- stands in Ebbets Field. It was not air-conditioned as clubhouses are today; ventilation came from narrow windows ten feet above the ground. The clubhouse was a long rectangle, with a trainers’ room and a corridor to Dressen’s office opening on the west. Old metal lockers ran around the walls. Reese, as captain, was assigned the first locker along the outside wall. This came with a battered metal door, a rough symbol of eminence since no other locker had a door of any kind. A small electric heater stood nearby. Reese reclined in an old swivel chair someone had found for him once. The other ball players sat on three-legged milkmaid’s stools.

On the other side of the small space.

I like that combination of words.

Maybe that is where the sidewalk ends.