Latest Parries
April 2012
From Nokia N95 to iPhone 4S
Annoyances and upsets with the iPhone 4S have been more than offset by its screen, the silkiness of its surfaces, the camera, and the third-party market for both software and hardware.
February 2012
2001: A Space Odyssey: Dry, Juicy, Linear, Luminous
After they finished watching the Bond movies, I figured the next series John Gruber and Dan Benjamin would discuss on The Talk Show would be Stanley Kubrick’s oeuvre. But Gruber refused — too personal for podcasting, he said. Disappointed, I rewatched 2001.
January 2012
A Scheme of a Number of Friends
Instead of acknowledging the wisdom of leading from behind, the Right jumped on the Obama administration’s handling of Libya as yet another example of at best incompetence. They lost me there.
October 2011
The Mouse and the Cantilever
Steve Jobs we lost at the age of 56; when Frank Lloyd Wright reached that age it was still only 1923, the time of merely his second comeback with Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel.
March 2010
Friendship is for Weenies
It’s amazing, given the adulation he enjoyed elsewhere, that the Israeli public knew from the start not to trust this US President.
Before the Setup
Nobody from usesthis.com has asked me what my setup us, nor is likely to anytime soon. So I’m just going to mouth off here about it. But first, some background.
February 2010
Walter Russell Mead steps gingerly into the Wieseltier/Sullivan imbroglio
On the Leon Wieseltier/Andrew Sullivan spat, Walter Russell Mead seems to want to have his strudel and eat it too.
October 2009
My Hope: Obama’s Change
Defeat in the Olympics bid may focus the mind in the Oval Office where it should be: Afghanistan.
July 2009
At Modi’in Mall
There’s nothing else around here except empty desolate pretty hills. The Israel Trail passes by a bit to the west. It’s a hot July Wednesday morning. Things are reasonably busy. The shops are mostly franchises, almost all homegrown — Super-Pharm, Aroma, Tzomet Sfarim, Cup O’ Joe’s, LaMetayel, Mega, Fox, Castro, H&O.
Israel, the Bad So Far
I’m surprised at the general appearance of Tel Aviv folks. Yes, it’s hot, but people appear dressed as if they’re in, I don’t know, Be’er Sheva. And the people in Be’er Sheva, last time I was there, looked to me like they’re dressed for Gaza.
M addie’s gone, and in my confusion I sort of believe that if I go back, or sideways somehow, I’ll have her back again. I guess I’m proud as well that 21 months after her passing I still live under the shadow of that day. Perhaps that’s nothing to be proud of; perhaps that merely reveals that I have far less going on in life than a 37-year-old man should. When my father was my age his son was having his Bar Mitzvah.
Yes, I do believe it is foolish to be so cut up about Maddie. I loved her, she loved me, but lamenting it does no good. Acceptance of her passing is near — if indeed it hasn’t already happened and I’m simply holding on to it as the thing to be morose about. We all, like twinkles on a sunny day’s waves, shine briefly. That I do know to be true. Other perspectives are futile. Grief, loss — these are the great teachers surely. Understand that what one has will pass. Blair as the incumbent prime minister talking with Ted Heath at a gathering of former PMs, years of the job behind him, years of it to go, but there it is, suddenly over now.
There really is nought to do except look forward, and have special times and places to remember those whom one personally loved and venerated. And try to learn the lessons of grief: Whatever one thinks one possesses — a companion, good health, certain surroundings, a frame of mind — will pass. What won’t pass: I guess that’s the question.
One thing that seems not to pass is my love of swaying trees, and I’m confident that both the wind and the trees will be here until my time too is done, and that unless I’m both blinded and deafened I shall be able to lie beneath them and hear and see and feel their sway. Beyond that there seems to be little except passing comforts. Genesis. Nietzsche. Joyce. Melville. And yet, it seems to make a difference to me under what regime a tree grows. Britain? America? Israel? And so the cycle of futile thoughts makes another round.
Hypocritical and self-indulgent: I want to cover up the telly here in the new living room because, well, it’s a telly in the living room, hinnit, and there is no other living room, and the path of least resistance to engage the brain, thereby mind, thereby self, thereby soul, is to switch it on. And once Irit, instigator of the tellied home, retires to bed, I of course indulge in a night of British telly watching. Hours have passed. News. A documentary on what prime ministers do after retirement. Commander in Chief with Geena Davis.
Previously
A Rash Appointment
Nextly
The Soft Ache of Cold Hotels