I had never heard of Adrien DeWind until I read his obituary in the NY Times this morning. (The older I get, the more I am drawn to the obits, with fear of personal extinction prompting me to recall the motto Samuel Johnson is said to have written on his watch dial: Work for the night is coming.) DeWind lived a long time and accomplished a great deal. I especially admire him as one of the founders of Human Rights Watch. Whatever one believes about rights — whether they are universal standards or arise only within specific social and cultural contexts — it seems indubitable that working to protect other people’s basic humanity is an admirable thing to do. What I find most moving about an obituary of this sort is that it marks the only kind of immortality I can believe in, that what one does in one’s life continues to ripple outward even after one is dead. For good or ill. In the memories of others, in the institutions one creates or shapes, in the written record one leaves behind. It’s little enough, of course, but it’s something, not nothing. Our lives are much longer than we imagine.
Monthly Archives: August 2009
Meet James Ensor
Another review, by Dawn-Michelle Baude, of the James Ensor show at MOMA I mentioned back in June. I love the deadpan presentation of horrors — same as in the old Anglo-American murder ballad tradition — in Ensor’s painting. Oh, yes, it is a world of greed, hatred, and delusion (as the Buddha taught), but it is colorful and interesting and even funny.
My Favorite Songwriter Who Isn’t Bob Dylan
A portrait of the young poet as an old man, or perhaps the old man as a young poet. In any case, here is an admiring profile of Leonard Cohen in the New Yorker.
Housekeeping
As the first step in a bit of blog remodeling, I have moved the list of links (blogroll) to its own page, a link to which can be found along the top of the page or in the right sidebar. A few other elements are due for simplification over the next couple of weeks, with the goal of making the page less cluttered and easier to read.
Sounds about Right
A description of meditation from someone far more experienced than I. I can’t imagine eleven hours a day of meditation, even if half of it was done walking. And as for discovering the “structure of [my] mind,” forget it. All I’ve noticed is that I have a fairly narrow set of repetitive thoughts. I suppose noticing that counts as some kind of insight, but it’s pretty superficial. I can only sit for about forty minutes in any case. For me, just being able to sit still for that long — regardless of what is or is not going on in my mind — represents something of an accomplishment.