Discoveries: Arts and Culture

Life is always a series of choices.  I had a chance to hear a NYT Pulitzer prize winning journalist talk about corruption he has uncovered on his beat in Shanghai where I lived for three years, so I was tempted and even put down money for the invitation from the N California Asia Society, but my feet took me to the California Book Club, on Sutter, same building as World Affairs Council, for wine and cheese and then this extraordinary opportunity provided by the rare book antiquarian dealer John Windle  here in SF. who specializes in Blake and has a Blake catalogue and gallery that is mind expanding. I was introduced , in person, to Blake's drawings at the Tate, while I was at Oxford; every time for the whole year, that I went into London which was about every 6-8 weeks, courtesy of my good English friend whose family lived in Sloane Square, where we stayed, I went to the Tate to see both the Turners and the William Blakes on rotation. Charles Daniels was the brilliant ten...

It was interesting.  I am thinking that since Astrid is Norweigan and her second language is English, that her translation is different than someone whose first language is English, and their second language, Norweigan, because this play had other revelations, and she cast it in a modern idiom.  It would be great to see it in publication.  We enjoyed the staged reading with talented actors and actresses from the Berkeley Rep School at the lovely Julia Morgan  Berkeley City Club. 

It has been months since I have visited my blogger...so sorry!  Tonight I was returned to it, by an evening with the man Tony Wheeler,  who started the LONELY PLANET guide(which he has now sold) ....the name came about because Wheeler  heard a song sung by Joe Crocker, in which he thought he heard him say," I found such a lonely planet....but what he actually said, was, "I found such a lovely planet.." Some of his revelations: he finds China the most interesting place, as it was closed when he started his travels in the 70's when he did his "hippie" tour through Iran and Afghanistan...in 1972.  Now he has the  Wheeler Foundation work on more than 50 projects in the developing world and in the establishment of the Wheeler Center for Books, Writing & Ideas in Melbourne, Australia, to, in part, create one of UNESCO's literary heritage cities, like Dublin! The most fearful moment in 50 years of travel was in Guatamala when his daughter, who is now ...

I have a confession to make; I only have read the non fiction of the great novelist Philip Roth. I am acquainted with all his ouevre and its impact and mythology and I found this essay very interesting for citing Roth as writing comedy, not satire or humor...and that he is a sum of his contradictions.  The most cited quote is so quintessentially memorable.   "When I was first in Czechoslovakia, "Roth wrote in a much quoted line, " it occurred to me that I work in a society where as a writer everything goes and nothing matters, while for the Czech writers I met in Prague, nothing goes and everything matters" , which can be said of Russia and other societies through time. Even, now, America.  Gopnik sees Roth as a storyteller.  Roth says "The writers who expanded and shaped my sense of America were mainly small -town Midwestserners(I am one) and Southerners(I agree there! ), he writes. He includes in this group Sherwood Anderson, Sinclair Lewis, Erskine Caldwell...

 Chabona : evokes Nature.   Remove the human hand what remains is “heart” .  Unaffected, sincere.  Utensils, environment, and relations between host and guest should reflect this.  " Ikebana reflects "Heaven" and Man, is organized and disciplined and regulated. Both derive from Buddhist practice: Light, Fragrance and Flowers . Three Styles: SHIN:  Classic.  (Formal) First Choose Flowers, then vase. Only use one stem, possibly a secondary one. Create substantial presence and verticality.   Chinese style: Bronze, Celadon, Kochi Red and Gold.  Symmetrical, Decorative ears.  Elegant.  "Crane's neck". GYO    (Semi formal) Individuality.    Flowers: Lean and quiet.  Japanese glazed ceramics, slightly irregular.   Raku wares.    Vase should support flowers but not draw attention to itself, but still be interesting.   Angle slightly and be angular....

I am blessed with seeing the most beautiful large red and dark blue dragonflies on my daily walk through the adjacent park around its little lagoon or pond where a pair of mallard ducks dip for food, and occasionally, early morning, a grey heron appears.  This poem which I had clipped from the NYT floated up from a notebook page, today: After the Dragonflies by W.S. Merwin . Dragonflies were as common as sunlight hovering in their own days backward forward and sideways as though they were memory now there are grown-ups hurring who never saw one and do not know what they  are not seeing the veins in a dragonfly's wings were made of light the veins in the leaves knew them and the flowing rivers the dragonflies came out of the color of water knowing their own way  when we appeared in their eyes we were strangers they took their light with them when they went there will be no one to remember us.  Bill Merwin is in his late 80.s as he heads into...

Garrick  Ohlsson played a beautiful Brahms Piano Concerto no 1  receiving 8 ovations...remarkable master, who I discover lives in San Francisco.   Yuri Temirkanov  conducted the most exceptional Shostakovich Symphony No. 5, which was a complex response to Soviet politics in the period.    For those who think it is about affirming joy, it is about affirming joy because one must affirm joy.  I have never heard such a brilliant rendition.  I was moved to tears and riveted to my seat through the First Movement, nearly laughed aloud in the scherzo, and then was riveted to my seat in the largo, and moved to tears in the final  Movement.   Only a Russian symphony and one conducted by this man could do this.(  The orchestra is top heavy, with men,  - I counted nearly 75 and 12 women....)   Every member of the audience was on their feet, with thundering unending applause!