quotes

A line of peace might appear
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power, questioned our needs, allowed
long pauses . . .

-Denise Levertov (from http://www.longpauses.com/about.htm)

Stand fast! And keep your childishness.
Read all the pendant's creeds and strictures,
but don't believe in anything
That can't be told in pictures.

-Chesterton (btw, I think I just coined a new word, Chestertion, an assertion by Chesterton)

"But it smells like red noises!"
-my brother Michael when he was about 5 (referring to a certain blanket)

" Every good Book should be enteraining. A good book will be more; it must not be less. Entertainment... is like a qualifying examination. If a fiction can't provide even that, we may be excused from inquiry into its higher qualities."
-Lewis (Experiment in Criticism)

"Film and TV are 2 of the most powerful storytelling tools of our time. Powerful because there is something traditional, magical and artistic about them. Traditional because we use long established elements of storytelling. Magical because we employ the most advanced technological tools to create audio-visual tricks, artistic because we get to express ourselves while sharing our ideas, dreams, and stories."
-Gokham Ozaysin

Synesthesia

My first introduction to Synesthesia was a Scientific American article I read at Barnes and Noble a few years ago. Basically, it's a fairly common (and non-harmful) brain disorder(?) where the language part of your brain and the parts that control the senses are interconnected in a way that they are not supposed to be. Because of this, people who have synesthesia hear colors, see sounds, feel tastes, etc. They don't imagine them, they see them. Also letters and numbers are usually color coded for them. here's a great quote from The Mind of a Mnemonist


"there are people who seem to have many voices, whose voice seems to be an entire composition, a bouquet. .. Eisenstein had just such a voice: listening to him, it was as though a flame with fibers protruding from it was advancing right towards me. I got so interested in the voice, I couldn't follow what he was saying . . . to this day I can't escape from seeing colors when I hear sounds. What first strikes me is the color of someone's voice. Then it fades off... for it does not interfere. If, say, a person says something., I see the word; but should another person's voice break in, blurs appear. These creep into syllables of the word and I can't make out what is being said"

-http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0674576225/ref=ase_cherrymagic/104-1924824-7664740?v=glance&s=books

Books books books..

At Barnes and Noble on monday, I found several interesting books.
One was a book I had heard of on Mars Hill Audio (they had an interview with the author), called something like "The degradation of language in music and speech and why we should like care." It looks like a very good book, definitely an area I need to improve on.

Another interesting book was Winston Churchill: His Life and Paintings. Churchill was a prolific painter, which is something I had never known till watching the BBC documentary on him. On that note, at Half Price they had JRR Tolkien: Illustrator (or something like that), which contains just about every painting, drawing, and sketch that is available. Turns out Tolkien was a very skilled artist too. Apparently he designed many of the elvish crests that they used in the movies. For 1$ at Half price I got a large book on Norman Rockwell. This is the first time in a while that I've been to Half price to buy books for myself in a while.(as opposed to buying them to resell on the Amazon.com) I also got a Leonardo da Vinci day calendar, a Book of essays on literature and Film, a book on Drawing, and a book on American inventors all for about 10 bucks.

For Christmas, I got my mother Miniatures and Morals: the Christian Novels of Jane Austin by Peter J Liethart. But she lets me read it too. ;) It's really fascinating, Liethart is becoming one of my favorite Authors (after A House for My Name, Against Christianity, his Blog and a few lectures) I've only read one Austin book so far, Pride and Prejudice, but she is now on my list of Authors that I want read all their books. I've also just ordered Wise Words by Leithart, which is a bunch of Fairy Tales based on the Proverbs. I'll probably read it aloud to by little brother and sisters. I also started reading another Canon Press book, Fidelity by Doug Wilson, a very frank look at sex from a biblical perspective.

I'm about a quarter of the way through the fifth Harry Potter book, which is of course good. Its funny though, because I am both listening to the Audiobook, and reading it (not the same chapters of course)

I just checked out 3 books from the A&M Corpus Library, which is not nearly as good as the real A&M library. One is called Utopias, Dolphins, and Computers by Mary Midgly (another author interviewed on mars hill) who is a conservative (possibly Christian?) British philosopher. I've only read a few pages, but its really interesting, in her words it's a book on Philosophical pluming. I also checked out Painters of Faith by Gene Edward Veith, another one of my fav. Authors; and Bright Colors Seen Falsely, a profoundly interesting book on Synesthesia, Which I will post on next.