Month: September 2008

• Who to marry: Esolen’s rules:

  Touchstone Magazine – Mere Comments: The Rules So then, whom could you marry? A long time ago we came up with something we called “Esolen’s Rules.” They’re only half facetious. But they are an attempt to get at the normal: 1. Don’t marry a woman who likes cats but does not like dogs.  You may…

• Drawing, by John Berger: “how has… [the face]… become the face it is”

  All creation is in the art of seeing – Times Online But now, because you asked me what drawing was to me . . . when you are drawing, anyway when you are drawing something which is alive, you are drawing the traces of what has happened to it until that moment at which you…

• Challenge the Premise

  If you answer the question, you endorse the premise. The truth is, every question, in every conversation, places the two in the space the questioner has decided is important.  There is no logical or moral compulsion to buy that prior decision.  Often, to do so wastes time. Jesus seldom answered the question.  His reluctance to…

• “Sabi”: The Value I Like To Draw

  Sabi by itself means “the bloom of time.” It connotes natural progression-tarnish, hoariness, rust-the extinguished gloss of that which once sparkled. It’s the understanding that beauty is fleeting. The word’s meaning has changed over time, from its ancient definition, “to be desolate,” to the more neutral “to grow old.” By the thirteenth century, sabi’s meaning…

• Katsushika Hokusai: How long for artists to learn…

  From around the age of six, I had the habit of sketching from life. I became an artist, and from fifty on began producing works that won some reputation, but nothing I did before the age of seventy was worthy of attention. At seventy-three, I began to grasp the structures of birds and beasts, insects…