Daily Entries for the week of
Sunday, November 1, 2020
through
Saturday, November 7, 2020
It’s Friday, November 6, 2020
Welcome to the 930th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie
at a town hall in Hillsborough, NJ 3/2/11
Bob Jagendorf from Manalapan, NJ, USA - NJ Governor Chris Christie
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2.0 Commentary
When you read this, we will likely know who our President will be for the next four years. Am writing this the day after Election Day when a whole lot of serious counting is going on over six states.
At midnight, Trump appeared likely to win.
By noon the next day, the stretch, Biden seems to be ahead.
By 4.00pm, when I’m writing this, it looks like Biden is the probable winner.
I admit to being fearful of a takeover of our government by Donald Trump.
So when he announced that the election was over, that he had won, and that ballot counting should stop, my worst fears seemed to be crystallizing.
And then Chris Christie, who alone among the President’s advisors, admitted he had made a mistake in ignoring the medical experts; that he should have worn a mask and kept a distance and likely avoided he covid-19 virus, immediately spoke out in favor of protecting American democracy, contradicting the President.
I was calmed.
And then came a flurry of Republican leaders joining Christie, notably Rick Santorum who is daily on CNN news, all debunking the President’s comments/directives/veiled call out to the lunatic fringe.
I relaxed.
Philosophy trumps politics.
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3.0 Tuscany, extracting an essence
I spent a lot of time on Wednesday listening to the glacial returns of those last six states.
Then I made a Bouillabaisse.
Then I hung out with my guests.
No time for reading up on the art of the Uffizi.
Although I did examine the BBC series on art called the Private Life of a Masterpiece.
It’d not available to stream so I ordered the discs.
$70.00.
Expensive.
But the cost of the trip demands that we spend what we must to enrich the adventure.
It arrives Friday.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
Buddha’s Zen
Buddha said:
“I consider the positions of kings and rulers as that of dust motes.
I observe treasures of gold and gems as so many bricks and pebbles.
I look upon the finest silken robes as tattered rags.
I see myriad worlds of the universe as small seeds of fruit, and
the greatest lake in India as a drop of oil on my foot.
I perceive the teachings of the world to be the illusion of magicians.
I discern the highest conception of emancipation as a golden brocade in a dream, and
view the holy path of the illuminated ones as flowers appearing in one’s eyes.
I see meditation as a pillar of a mountain,
Nirvana as a nightmare of daytime.
I look upon the judgment of right and wrong as the serpentine dance of a dragon, and
the rise and fall of beliefs as but traces left by the four seasons.”
One of the most powerful things we can do as mortal creatures perceiving a fleeting cosmos from a precarious perch, is to realize that all things are fleeting. All things are decaying.
All things are made up of the same perfectly imperfect matter as everything else. Permanence is just as much an illusion of reality as power is an illusion of culture. The wise thing is to be aware of both. And sometimes that requires an intellectual ruthlessness and an imaginative insouciance.
Buddha uses both in the above quote, tearing apart power constructs like they were flimsy pieces of parchment, poking holes in perceived ideologies with the hot poker of his words, and bringing the entire notion of fixed thinking crumbling down into the settled dust of free thinking, where the roots are finally allowed to be fed.
Gold melts into glittery nothingness. Fruit decays. Teachings become stagnations. The four seasons of life devour each other. What grows and flourishes eventually decays and dies. So be it.
But as Rumi profoundly stated, “Maybe you are searching among the branches for what only appears in the roots.”
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5.0 Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
A dear friend, in response to a recent post, asks why I think writers need to spend time with each other.
“Isn’t it enough simply to say, friends needs friends, and they need to get together?”
Blog meister responds: Colleen will be in town to visit me tomorrow. This is the third of a series of visits she is instigating with friends/colleagues/kindred spirits, to stay current with what each is doing with her craft, and to share opportunities for professional advancement. And to share a slice or two of life.
But my friend knows that. He’s just trying to get a rise out of me.
After sixty years he knows how to do it.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
For those who aspire to make a classic French dinner, here is the recipe for Bouillabaisse.
I made this on Wednesday night and it was spectacular.
BOUILLABAISSE
Serves Six
SHOPPING
Buy 6 pounds of assorted fresh fish (inc blue and red scaled species) and
a bunch of shellfish, including
12 cherrystone clams and two or three live rock crabs.
Maybe 6 dramatic-looking heads-on shrimp.
SOME FISH NEED EXTRA ATTENTION
Some fish need a bit extra preparation.
If conch and/or fresh octopus are included in our cache of shellfish, they need a twenty minute cook before anything else is added to the pot.
After boiling, pull the conch out of their shells and slice them and slice the octopus into rounds, returning these to the pot.
For the cherrystones, steam them open in 2 cups of water. Reserve the clam water, it being essential to the Bouillabaisse broth.
Cut the cherrystones into small pieces and add them to the pot. Add the clam water to the pot, counting it as part of the 196oz of liquid the recipe calls for.
SIDE STEPS
1. Boil 18 ounces of waxy potatoes and mash.
Set it aside.
2. While the base is softening, prepare a garnish of chopped basil Italian parsley, and lemon zest to have ready to sprinkle onto the platter of fish when preparing the platter for service. Reserve.
3. Take half of the mashed potatoes and convert it into a fiery condiment to place on the table for diners to spoon the flavor-enhancer into their personal bowl of broth.
How to? Add chili pepper, salt and freshly-ground pepper into olive oil infused with fried garlic.
This is a very spicy, garlicky, oily, flavorful condiment. It’s intended to be extreme for those hearty souls who want to ramp up their plates of fish and broth. Save for the table.
My simplified version of the French Rouille.
NOW PREPARE THE BASE, the genius of the cook.
Gather Aromatics:
3.5 oz olive oil
2oz red bell pepper
8oz leeks
2oz celery
½oz serrano chili
More than ½ medium head of garlic
¾ cup fresh parsley and/or basil
zest of a large orange
2 TB Tomato paste
1t salt
½ t each of dry fennel, bay leaves, and thyme
7 pistils (strands) of saffron
Combine all ingredients in a food chopper and turn them into a paste.
Scrape the contents into the Dutch Oven and heat until softened and perfumed.
When the base is fully softened, stir in half of the mashed potato.
MAKING THE BROTH
(Remember that if you’ve steamed clams open prior to making the dinner, that clam juice is critical to the broth and so deduct it from the total water we add to the pot.)
Add to the base:
3 quarts, or 12 cups, or 196 ounces of water plus
8oz dry white wine and
2oz orange juice
Bring the liquids to a boil then simmer for six minutes.
ADD THE FISH
Bring the broth (the water and base) to a boil and then, dividing the fish roughly in half, add all the firmer fish.
Return the soup to a boil and reduce to a simmer for three minutes.
Bring the pot to a boil again, and add the remainder of the fish.
Bring the soup to a boil and reduce to a low simmer, cooking the pot for six more minutes.
It’s done.
Remove the fish to a warmed serving platter, garnish with chopped parsley and basil and serve, following it out to the dining room table with the hot soup.
Bring the platter and the hot soup to the table.
Guests will create their own soup plates.
We’ll have a heck of a time getting them to stop eating.
Halfway through dinner, the server should consider returning the pot of soup to the stove top for a reheat.
The next day, I blend the remainder of the Bouillabaisse in a food chopper and serve it hot as a lunch or dinner.
My version of Soupe de poisson.
No. Not poison.
So good.
So really delicious.
Perhaps add in the leftover Rouille, the spicy mashed potatoes.
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Christopher James Christie (born September 6, 1962) is an American politician, political commentator, lobbyist and former federal prosecutor who served as the 55th Governor of New Jersey from 2010 to 2018.
Christie was born in Newark, New Jersey and raised in Livingston, New Jersey. After graduating in 1984 from the University of Delaware, he earned a J.D. at Seton Hall University School of Law. A Republican, Christie was elected county freeholder (legislator) for Morris County, New Jersey, serving from 1995 to 1998. By 2002, he had campaigned for Presidents George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush; the latter appointed him U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, a position he held from 2002 to 2008.
Christie won the 2009 Republican primary for Governor of New Jersey and defeated Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine in the general election. In his first term, he was credited with cutting spending, capping property tax growth, and engaging in recovery efforts after Hurricane Sandy. He was re-elected by a wide margin in 2013. During his second term as governor, Christie's standing was damaged by the Fort Lee lane closure scandal. After that time, he ranked among the least popular governors in the United States.
Christie chaired the Republican Governors Association during the 2014 election cycle. On June 30, 2015, he announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination in the 2016 presidential election. He suspended his candidacy on February 10, 2016. Later, he endorsed eventual winner Donald Trump and was named head of Trump's transition planning team. Christie left office in 2018 at the conclusion of his second term as Governor of New Jersey, and registered as a lobbyist in June 2020.
In major breaks with the Trump team, he acknowledged that by not following the advice of the medical profession he put himself and those around him in danger; and just several days after that, election night, immediately debunked Trump’s declaration that he had won re-election and all ballot counting should be stopped.
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It’s Thursday, November 5, 2020
Welcome to the 929th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Home Schooling
A person educating children at home
anonymus - Punch (the Danish) side 121.
Representation.
- But is there now any of you who know what it means to be represented?
- May I
- Yes, it is like mother telling Frederik on a Sunday that he shall go to our bench in Our Lady's Church, that's how our family is represented.
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2.0 Commentary
When you read this, Election Day will be over.
I write this in the afternoon of that day.
So you know why I’m making little mention of the results.
We are in for an unlooked for warm stretch.
Welcome.
On the first of the warm days, my friend Colleen is driving in town and we will walk for two hours, catching up on our personal as well as writers’ lives.
Colleen rightfully holds that writers need each other’s company.
It’s 10.45pm Election Night and the early counting states have their winners, all proected by the media; all predictable.
This looks like it’s going to be a long night.
Will try to sleep.
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3.0 Tuscany, extracting an essence
Did not work on the art for my Tuscany trip.
Too many other pulls.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
4.) Futility and Absurdity
In early times in Japan, bamboo-and-paper lanterns were used with candles inside. A blind man, visiting a friend one night, was offered a lantern to carry home with him.
“I do not need a lantern,” he said. “Darkness or light is all the same to me.”
“I know you do not need a lantern to find your way,” his friend replied, “but if you don’t have one, someone else may run into you. So you must take it.”
zen-version-of-wheres-waldoThe blind man started off with the lantern and before he had walked very far someone ran squarely into him.
“Look out where you are going!” he exclaimed to the stranger. “Can’t you see this lantern?”
“Your candle has burned out, brother,” replied the stranger.
Sometimes life is futile. Sometimes we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. Sometimes good luck is disguised by bad luck and vice versa. Sometimes a kick in the ass propels us forward, and sometimes it’s just a plain old kick in the ass.
The absurdity of the human condition is both very painful and very laughable. It’s an ironic and incongruous and poignantly imperfect. But that’s also half the fun of it. Life comes at us fast, and sometimes the healthiest thing to do is to laugh despite the speed of it all.
Between the pain of life’s lessons and the medicinal laughter of cultivating a good sense of humor, there is the unvanquishable absurdity of life kicking us around. Sometimes all we can do is kick back with a ruthless sense of humor, not despite irony and incongruity, but because of them.
Dive in! The water is warm (and cold and safe and dangerous and sometimes there’s even oil in it). But don’t let that stop you from living; from dancing through the glaring futility and venomous absurdity of it all with a humor of the most high.
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5.0 Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
This from Colleen G, responding to schooling children in the midst of a pandemic:
Hey Dom,
I'm glad we were able to reschedule to Thursday as I hope to be less eyore by then:)
I thought you'd enjoy this photo of two of my kids (the youngest two:) coming home to my, now set up, "2020 Battle for the White House" chess set that I was breaking out of the box on our chat. They asked if they could play and of course I said yes.
The commentary from the kids is what I am most enjoying:
"Charles, you want to play chess?" asks Madeline.
"Yeah, sure." Charles
Madeline, "Which side do you want to be?"
Charles, "The opposite side of Donald Trump."
Madeline more interested in playing chess than getting a specific side concedes to be the side of the Republicans and says aloud, "I hope I lose."
--I laugh.
Then, Madeline (3rd grade) tells me, "Mom, this is actually educational. It tells you the names of the people on the pieces."
Me, undeniably proud that my young kids can see past a game of one against another to what they can learn from the game regardless.
A few moves later Madeline declares proudly, as she captures Bishop Bader Ginsburg from Charles, "Haha, I got Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I have her book."
This set was definitely worth the money:)
Cheers,
Colleen
Blog meister responds: Kudos to all parents trying to keep their children advancing.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Tuesday night I cooked a dry-aged rib-eye from Whole Foods.
The steak cost $30.00, compared to the $60.00 I paid for the dry-aged steak I bought from Eataly on Sunday.
The Whole Foods steak was delicious. Not as wonderful in flavor and texture as the Prime steak from Eataly, but I can’t afford a $60.00 steak, even occasionally. The $30.00 steak is my ‘occasional,’ buying it instead of going out for dinner.
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7. “Conflicted” podcast
Conflicted, by Dom Capossela, is a spiritual/fantasy story about a sixteen-year-old mystic-warrior conflicted internally by her self-imposed alienation from God, her spiritual wellspring, and, externally, by the forces of darkness seeking her death or ruination.
https://soundcloud.com/user-449713331/sets/conflicted-dom-capossela
The podcasts are also available on Sound Cloud, iTunes, Stitcher, Pinterest, Pocket Cast, and Facebook.
Search: dom capossela or conflicted or both
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Homeschooling or home schooling, also known as home education or elective home education (EHE), is the education of children at home or a variety of places other than school.
Usually conducted by a parent, tutor, or an online teacher, many homeschool families use less formal, more personalized methods of learning that are not always found in schools.
While "homeschooling" is the term commonly used in the United States and other nations in North America, "home education" is primarily used in the United Kingdom, Europe, and many Commonwealth countries.
The actual practice of homeschooling can look very different.
The spectrum ranges from highly structured forms based on traditional school lessons to more open, free forms such as unschooling.
Before the introduction of compulsory school attendance laws, most childhood education was done by families and local communities.
In many developed countries, homeschooling is a legal alternative to public and private schools. In other nations, homeschooling remains illegal or restricted to specific conditions, as recorded by homeschooling international status and statistics.
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It’s Wednesday, November 4, 2020
Welcome to the 928th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus
(c. 1484–1486). Tempera on canvas. (67.9 in × 109.6 in). Uffizi, Florence
Depicts the goddess Venus, having emerged from the sea as a fully grown woman, arriving at the sea-shore.
The seashell she stands on was a symbol in classical antiquity for a woman's vulva.
Thought to be based in part on the Venus de' Medici, an ancient Greek marble sculpture of Aphrodite.
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2.0 Commentary
The Northeast: weather changes are dramatic.
When we went to press voting hadn’t even started.
Forgive the delay of commentary on the Big News.
This was a busy day: phone with my son Dom; a zoom with my friend Colleen; several emails conversations; online activating a prepaid card for our laundry room; my weekly online class led by my granddaughter, routine activities, shopping for product for the Bouillabaisse am going to make on Wednesday night.
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3.0 Tuscany, extracting an essence
Despite the busy day, I did a bit more work on the Birth of Venus, enough to finish my research.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
This is the third of five koans we are publishing at this time.
A Parable
A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger.
He fled, the tiger after him.
Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge.
The tiger sniffed at him from above.
Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him.
Only the vine sustained him.
Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him.
Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other.
How sweet it tasted!
This is the ultimate koan on the power of living in the moment.
As mortal beings we are constantly surrounded by death.
We are forever pinched by two overwhelming infinities.
No matter what we do there is a crushing sense of nothingness behind us dwarfed only by the crushing infinity that lies ahead of us.
As Sebastian Faulks said, “To conceive of ourselves as fragmentary matter cohering for a millisecond between two eternities of darkness is very difficult.”
The paradox is: how do we find joy or even happiness when caught between the rock and the hard place of life?
The trick is presence.
The secret is awareness.
The key is curiosity.
All three are the epitome of life’s (a delicious red strawberry) overcoming of entropy (two mice gnawing at a vine) despite the inevitability of death (two hungry tigers).
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5.0 Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
This from Sally C in response to the koan published yesterday.
Dear Dom,
With regards to the wisdom of Nan-in, the Japanese master you mention in today’s post, here is an article on paradoxes that seems to reflect the same philosophy. I thought you might be interested in it.
6 Paradoxic Truths of Life
https://medium.com/search?q=6%20Paradoxic%20Truths%20of%20Life
In that painting, the brown horse whose heels we see kicked high in the air – that reminds me greatly of the Lipizzaner stallions of Austria (horses developed from Spanish stock), of their “airs above the ground” that evolved as movements of the military horses to protect their riders, and to provide them with battle advantages, and have come down through the centuries as an equestrian ballet. I imagine that the relationship between horse and rider must have been an unbreakable bond of trust.
Sally
Blog meister responds: Thank you my dear. Your input is always welocme.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
I ate dinner alone: leftover Chicken w Shallots and Artichokes.
Delicious; and no effort.
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7. “Conflicted” podcast
Conflicted, by Dom Capossela, is a spiritual/fantasy story about a sixteen-year-old mystic-warrior conflicted internally by her self-imposed alienation from God, her spiritual wellspring, and, externally, by the forces of darkness seeking her death or ruination.
https://soundcloud.com/user-449713331/sets/conflicted-dom-capossela
The podcasts are also available on Sound Cloud, iTunes, Stitcher, Pinterest, Pocket Cast, and Facebook.
Search: dom capossela or conflicted or both
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The Uffizi gallery description:
Known as the “Birth of Venus”, the composition actually shows the goddess of love and beauty arriving on land, on the island of Cyprus, born of the sea spray and blown there by the winds, Zephyr and, perhaps, Aura. The goddess is standing on a giant scallop shell, as pure and as perfect as a pearl. She is met by a young woman, who is sometimes identified as one of the Graces or as the Hora of spring, and who holds out a cloak covered in flowers. Even the roses, blown in by the wind are a reminder of spring. The subject of the painting, which celebrates Venus as symbol of love and beauty, was perhaps suggested by the poet Agnolo Poliziano.
Wikipedia description:
It depicts the goddess Venus arriving at the shore after her birth, when she had emerged from the sea fully-grown (called Venus Anadyomene and often depicted in art).
In the center the newly-born goddess Venus stands nude in a giant scallop shell. Its size is purely imaginary, and is also found in classical depictions of the subject.
At the left the wind god Zephyr blows at her, with the wind shown by lines radiating from his mouth. He is in the air, and carries a young female, who is also blowing, but less forcefully. Both have wings. Vasari was probably correct in identifying her as "Aura", personification of a lighter breeze.
Their joint efforts are blowing Venus towards the shore, and blowing the hair and clothes of the other figures to the right.
At the right a female figure who may be floating slightly above the ground holds out a rich cloak or dress to cover Venus when she reaches the shore, as she is about to do. She is one of the three Horae or Hours, Greek minor goddesses of the seasons and of other divisions of time, and attendants of Venus. The floral decoration of her dress suggests she is the Hora of Spring.
Alternative identifications for the two secondary female figures involve those also found in the Primavera; the nymph held by Zephyr may be Chloris, a flower nymph he married in some versions of her story, and the figure on land may be Flora. Flora is generally the Roman equivalent of the Greek Chloris; in the Primavera Chloris is transformed into the figure of Flora next to her, following Ovid's Fasti, but it is hard to see that such a transformation is envisaged here. However, the roses blown along with the two flying figures would be appropriate for Chloris.
The subject is not strictly the "Birth of Venus", a title given to the painting only in the nineteenth century (though given as the subject by Vasari), but the next scene in her story, where she arrives on land, blown by the wind. The land probably represents either Cythera or Cyprus, both Mediterranean islands regarded by the Greeks as territories of Venus.
They have been endlessly analyzed by art historians, with the main themes being: the emulation of ancient painters and the context of wedding celebrations (generally agreed), the influence of Renaissance Neo-Platonism (somewhat controversial), and the identity of the commissioners (not agreed). Most art historians agree, however, that the Birth does not require complex analysis to decode its meaning, in the way that the Primavera probably does. While there are subtleties in the painting, its main meaning is a straightforward, if individual, treatment of a traditional scene from Greek mythology, and its appeal is sensory and very accessible, hence its enormous popularity.
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It’s Tuesday, November 3, 2020
Welcome to the 927th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
“Bond. James Bond.”
Sean Connery in 2008
Stuart Crawford
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2.0 Commentary
Do you believe we have finally reached it: Voting Day?
As if the past two weeks weren’t voting days.
92,000,000 Americans have already voted.
Definitely have to rethink both the manner in which we vote, and when we may.
And, for federal elections, we must make the rethink-results uniform throughout the country.
The possible turmoil that faces us in the time after the polls officially close is nuts.
Presence.
The man had presence.
He was in some poorly-done movies but in the worst of them his charisma shone.
What company was he in?
“Yo, Adrian!”
“May the force always be with you.”
“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn!”
“There’s no place like home.”
“We’ll always have Paris…”
“I’m also just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.”
“You make me want to be a better man.”
“To infinity and beyond!”
“As if!”
“Wax on, wax off.”
‘Life is just like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get.'”
“Go ahead, make my day.”
“There’s no place like home.”
“Here’s Johnny!”
“There’s no crying in baseball!”
“Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”
“Leave the gun. Take the cannolis.”
“You had me at ‘Hello.'”
“Elementary, my dear Watson.”
“Good morning, Vietnam!”
“What’s a weekend?”
“You're gonna need a bigger boat.”
“Here's looking at you, kid.”
“My precious.”
“Houston, we have a problem.”
“E.T. phone home.”
“You can't handle the truth!”
“I’m having a friend for dinner.”
“I let him go.”
“You talking to me?”
“I'm walking here! I'm walking here!”
“Stella! Hey, Stella!”
“I could’a been a contender.”
To these great lines add a couple of lines from Mr. Connery:
“A martini. Shaken, not stirred.”
“Bond. James Bond.”
Damn! But that man added much to the body of cinema.
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3.0 Tuscany, extracting an essence
Researched Botticelli’s Birth of Venus.
So much material exists on this painting I need to devote an extra day of research on it.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
Koan #2.) Muddy Road
Tanzan and Ekido were once traveling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was still falling.
Coming around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection.
“Come on, girl” said Tanzan at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud.
Ekido did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he no longer could restrain himself. “We monks don’t go near females,” he told Tanzan, “especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?”
“I left the girl there,” said Tanzan. “Are you still carrying her?”
This koan reminds me of the following quote by Rumi, “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
Ekido is so caught up in the rightness and wrongness of Tanzan’s actions that he becomes a victim to the static past at the expense of the dynamic present. Tanzan has already let it go.
Life is counter-intuitively situational. The human condition is never cut and dry. There are rules and there are laws. Some of which are in balance with greater cosmic law and some of which are not.
Sometimes the “right” thing to do is to do the “wrong” thing according to convention. Sometimes morality is just as muddy as the road Tanzan and Ekido were traveling down.
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5.0 Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
At a dinner party last night the unanimous consensus was that this election posed a serious threat to our democracy.
That we forget how fragile a form of government we have.
That we owe ourselves, the world owes us, great thanks for leading by example.
Despite great odds against.
God watch over us against forces willing to destroy the country in order to replace it with something grotesque.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Sunday night I bit the bullet.
I bought a dry-aged ribeye steak at Eataly for $40.00 per pound.
Was labelled ‘Prime.’
Compare to W Foods dry-aged for $21.00 per pound, although not ‘prime.’
The taste?
The near $60.00 pound-and-a-half prime, dry-aged beef rib eye was the best steak I’ve ever eaten at home.
I didn’t want it to be.
I wanted the less expensive steak to be as good.
It wasn’t.
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7. “Conflicted” podcast
Conflicted, by Dom Capossela, is a spiritual/fantasy story about a sixteen-year-old mystic-warrior conflicted internally by her self-imposed alienation from God, her spiritual wellspring, and, externally, by the forces of darkness seeking her death or ruination.
https://soundcloud.com/user-449713331/sets/conflicted-dom-capossela
The podcasts are also available on Sound Cloud, iTunes, Stitcher, Pinterest, Pocket Cast, and Facebook.
Search: dom capossela or conflicted or both
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Sir Thomas Sean Connery (25 August 1930 – 31 October 2020) was a Scottish actor and producer.
He is best known as the first actor to portray the British secret agent James Bond in film, starring in seven Bond films (the first five films, from Dr. No to You Only Live Twice, plus Diamonds Are Forever and Never Say Never Again) between 1962 and 1983.
Connery began acting in smaller theatre and television productions until his breakout role as Bond.
Although he did not like the off-screen attention the role gave him, the success brought film offers from famed directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Sidney Lumet and John Huston for dramatic roles.
Those films included Marnie (1964), The Hill (1965), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Highlander (1986), The Name of the Rose (1986), The Untouchables (1987), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Dragonheart (1996), The Rock (1996), and Finding Forrester (2000).
Connery retired from acting in 2006, although he briefly came out to provide a voice-over role in 2012.
His achievements in film were recognized with an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (including the BAFTA Fellowship), and three Golden Globes, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award. In 1987 he was made a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in France, and he received the US Kennedy Center Honors lifetime achievement award in 1999. Connery was knighted in the 2000 New Year Honours for services to film drama.
Connery was polled in a 2004 Sunday Herald as "The Greatest Living Scot" and in a 2011 EuroMillions survey as "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". He was voted by People magazine as both the "Sexiest Man Alive" in 1989 and the "Sexiest Man of the Century" in 1999.
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It’s Monday, November 2, 2020
Welcome to the 926th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Niccolò Mauruzi da Tolentino unseats Bernardino della Carda
at the Battle of San Romano (dating uncertain, c. 1435–1455), tempera on wood, 182 × 320 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
Paolo Uccello
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2.0 Commentary
As part of my reading for the online class I take, https://www.readingcloser.com
we were assigned Leaving the Atocha Station, Ben Lerner.
In the reading, we came across the word koan, a paradoxical anecdote or riddle, used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment.
Koans are not about arriving at an answer, but to see for ourselves that our intellect sometimes fail to provide us with a completely satisfying answer.
Some might even claim that koans are anti-intellectual.
But they are neither anti-intellectual nor intellectual.
They simply point out that reality itself cannot be “caught.”
In the next five days, taken from other readings, I’ll publish five of these koans in the Chuckles and Thoughts section below.
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3.0 Tuscany, extracting an essence
On Saturday, worked on Paolo Uccello’s Battle of San Romano.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.
Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring.
The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!”
“Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”
This is a classic Zen koan about the importance of learning, unlearning, and relearning to remain sharp and free from fixed thinking.
The imagery of the cup overflowing is a powerful symbol reminding us to let things go so that we can “pour” more experience into our lives.
The paradox is that we can never truly let go of what we’ve learned. It’s always retained on some level. In muscle memory, for example. What we’re “pouring out” of the “cup” of our minds is the ego’s attachment to learning and memory and a releasing of fixed opinions and rigid expectations.
Indeed, a mind-dump a day keeps the brainwash away. Similar to the Zen proverb, “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” Before learning, empty cup, wash cup. After learning, empty cup, wash cup.
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5.0 Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
One of my dear friends emailed a comment on my post regarding waking up to a bad day.
“I’ve had plenty of those,” she smiled wryly at herself.
Then we smiled knowingly at each other.
The commonality of age.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Saturday night I turned the kitchen over to a novice wannabe.
Thirty minutes later than the suggested start time she began.
Being much faster in her movements than I, she finished on time.
And the resulting chicken cacciatore was delicious.
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7. “Conflicted” podcast
Conflicted, by Dom Capossela, is a spiritual/fantasy story about a sixteen-year-old mystic-warrior conflicted internally by her self-imposed alienation from God, her spiritual wellspring, and, externally, by the forces of darkness seeking her death or ruination.
https://soundcloud.com/user-449713331/sets/conflicted-dom-capossela
The podcasts are also available on Sound Cloud, iTunes, Stitcher, Pinterest, Pocket Cast, and Facebook.
Search: dom capossela or conflicted or both
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The subject of the painting is the victory of the Florentine forces over the Sienese troops and the alliance guided by the Duke of Milan at the battle of San Romano (Pisa) in 1432.
Niccolò da Tolentino, at the head of the Florentine army, is shown as he unseats Bernardino della Carda, the head of the adversary troops, with his lance while the battle is raging all around.
The direction of the lances and crossbows, with those of the Florentine forces slightly angled forwards and those of the adversaries slightly set back, foreshadows the outcome of the battle.
The central figure on the white horse is probably Bernardino della Ciarda. He was a former captain in the Florentine army but had recently defected to the opponents. He is fully armored and about to be thrown off his horse by a jousting lance. In the foreground, you can see several fallen horses and soldiers.
The Battle of San Romano is the most famous work by Paolo Uccello (1397-1475).
He was a pioneer of the perspective: he was obsessed by the study of reproduction of things according to difficult or almost impossible perspectives. This characteristic puts his art in contact with the Renaissance, but he was also still inside the spirit of the International Gothic style. Uccello followed a personal artistic way.
The artwork was made according to the perspectiva naturalis, in which there are various vanishing points: thanks to this kind of perspective, the artist could separate the foreground – where the battle takes place and many elements are depicted foreshortened – from the background. Here there are hunting scenes and characters that have unreal proportions.
The attention for the details of armors and horses, the fairy-tale atmosphere are part of the late-Gothic style of the work. The presence of a lot of details reminds us of the tapestry style.
The integrations in the corners show the depiction of orange leaves, the “mala medica” or sour orange, that was the emblem of the Medici family. To show the armor and the bridles on the horses, Paolo Uccello used a rather large amount of metal leaf, which in the past would have given the painting a rich, wealth of colors. Uccello was a virtuoso in perspective, and he shows this in the construction of foreshortened bodies that allow us to assume a viewpoint from the bottom, due to the position of the panels in the palace belonging to Lionardo Bartolini.
He used perspective to create a feeling of depth in his paintings. Working in the Late Gothic tradition, he emphasized color and spectacle rather than classical realism.
The painting, now in the Uffizi Gallery, shows the Florentine general (recklessly but improbably dressed in a red and gold velvet brocade hat, rather than a protective helmet) directing an attack on the Sienese who had joined forces with the town of Lucca and the ruling Visconti family of Milan.
The work has all the pageantry one associates with a jousting match rather than a life-or-death battle. There is no sign of any blood, and only one visible casualty, lying prostrate on the ground. The middle ground of the picture is occupied by a hedge bearing oranges and roses, one of several decorative and stylized details. The perspective used is quite complex. The debris of battle and the dead man are arranged in such a way that the receding lines of perspective, or orthogonals, meet in at least two vanishing points in the foreground of the painting.
As in the fresco scenes from the life of Noah in Santa Maria Novella, here too the movement which should animate the scenes seems to be arrested by the isolation of certain details, such as: the elaborate armour, the gilded studs, the leather saddles, the shiny coats of the cavalry horses, and the resplendent mazzocchi headgear.
The composition of the painting is not very realistic as the horses and soldiers in this painting look like dummies. The reason is that Uccello’s main interest in painting was not to perfectly depict a scene from history, but he was more interested in getting the linear perspective right.
Look, for example at all the lances that are in this painting. Some are conveniently dropped on the ground in a geometrical pattern. The lances in vertical direction all point to the same vanishing point which Uccello wanted to incorporate to create depth in the painting.
The vanishing point is just above the head of the white horse. In the background, you can see some soldiers and dogs hunting for rabbit and deer.
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It’s Sunday, November 1, 2020
Welcome to the 925th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Annunciation (Leonardo da Vinci and Andrea del Verrocchio, da Vinci’s teacher)
Leonardo’s first
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2.0 Commentary
Cold is relative.
If one can afford to dress properly for it it’s depressing but not debilitating.
But many cannot.
Those many suffer.
Discomfort. Pain. Illness. Death.
The poor ye shall always have with you.
Yes.
But there is an ending line.
Some will say “So doing anything is futile.”
Others, “Let’s do what we can to alleviate their suffering.”
My new Canada Goose coat makes me warm.
And sad.
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3.0 Tuscany, extracting its essence
On Friday I researched the 21-year-old da Vinci’s first painting, the Annunciation which he completed with his teacher, Verrocchio.
Such a luxury.
Such fun.
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4.0 Chuckles/Thoughts
He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral.
Why?
Because anger looks to the good of justice.
And if you can live amid injustice without anger,
you are immoral as well as unjust.
~Thomas Aquinas
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5.0 Mail
We love getting mail.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
The talk today was weather-centric.
Northeast.
Basically, the weather in our area varies widely from awful to miserable.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Friday night I broiled chicken drumsticks which I bought on sale and I baked a W Foods Chicken Pot Pie which I bought on sale.
I heated up some of my own Chicken Gravy and had an enjoyable dinner while outside the storm
dominated the streets.
I drank the other half of the Pouilly Fume I started last night.
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7. “Conflicted” podcast
Conflicted, by Dom Capossela, is a spiritual/fantasy story about a sixteen-year-old mystic-warrior conflicted internally by her self-imposed alienation from God, her spiritual wellspring, and, externally, by the forces of darkness seeking her death or ruination.
https://soundcloud.com/user-449713331/sets/conflicted-dom-capossela
The podcasts are also available on Sound Cloud, iTunes, Stitcher, Pinterest, Pocket Cast, and Facebook.
Search: dom capossela or conflicted or both
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11.0 Thumbnails
The first work of the twenty-year-old master, The Annunciation is not yet what one would call Leonardesque.
The Annunciation is generally considered to be one of Leonardo’s youthful works, painted when he was still working in the studio of Andrea del Verrocchio. It copies an invention of Verrocchio’s, the shape of the lectern, inspired by the tomb of Piero the Gouty in the church of San Lorenzo, Florence.
This picture is nonetheless a masterful achievement and proof of Leonardo da Vinci's innate pictorial talent.
Everything in this work is of a high poetic and stylistic quality: the handling of the figures and their attributes, the spatial construction, and the distant trees and watercourse, which attest to the artist's enduring love of nature.
One can already see the careful attention to the atmospheric changes in the landscape which will be further developed by the artist in later work.
Many changes were to come in his painting, for Leonardo da Vinci was a tireless innovator, but this picture would suffice to rank him among the greatest.
Although it is now thought to be a collaboration, signs of the signature da Vinci style can clearly be seen, particularly in the Angel Gabriel on the left, whose face bears a distinct similarity to the artist’s other works like the La Belle Ferronnière and the Mona Lisa.
The sacred scene is set in the garden of a Florentine palace, with a landscape on the background which is already peculiarly Leonardesque, for the magic and unreal atmosphere created by mountains, water and sky.
Leonardo's personality is pointed out also in the beautiful drapery of the Virgin and the Angel, while the marble table in front of her probably quotes the tomb of Piero and Giovanni dei Medici in the church of San Lorenzo sculpted by Verrocchio in this period.
The architectural features are drawn according to the rules of perspective, with a central vanishing point.
Some anomalies can be found in the figure of the Virgin, whose right arm appears too long – perhaps a reflection of Leonardo’s early research into optics, which would have taken into account a lateral viewpoint (from the right) – and lowered, due to the original location of the painting, over a side altar in a church.
The painting would be viewed from below.
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