El Gringoqueño

This has been sitting in my drafts folder for over two years (Feb 19, 2006) – time to publish, I say!

You’ve all read them; they are what I like to term, “Journey Sentences.”  They are the typical sentences from the earlier part of the 20th Century and before. Most them would start out like the following:

Having all the deftness of a barnacled fishing trawler and half the wit of a common ordinary housefly, which is to say, not a lot, and wishing to keep up appearances so that should a potential suitor ever be quite so oblivious to said traits and stumble or perhaps bumble might trip and land with such a thud as to cause an impression upon the earth from which his posterior might never escape, Grace quietly nibbled on her egg salad sandwich.

Hah! that was a hoot.  Look, I don’t even know if that was grammatically correct or whatever, and frankly, I’m not going to go back find out.  You get the point.  But ahh, the journey sentence, the sentence which begins and ends you know not where.  Half the fun was the journey and the folly.  Might you reread the sentence, absorb its richness for clever clues as to vistas one might find along the windy path.  Lovely.

Who has time for that?

In today’s society with its fast pace and ruthless efficiency, we have no time for journeys.  Where are we going?  We ask.  Tell me now, dammit!  I don’t have time for your foppery, your magic journeys of butterflies and candy coated magical literary foreplay.

Let’s just get to it, shall we?

Perhaps this style of prose had its place long ago when the well-placed and small gentry of leisure had more time on their hands. Reading was idle time, time for relaxation.

Then: They wrote these crazy mad sentences.
Now: We watch people eating bugs.

Or maybe the world was so arbitrary and ruthless that literature just reflected what was familiar.  Whether rich or poor, you or your kids/wife/husband might be dead in a week from some fever, infection, or God’s will.  You didn’t know where it was going or when it might end, so you needed to be vigilant in all moments.  Literature might have reflected the capricious nature of life.  Meandering verbiage reflected what was known of the world and our control over it, which is to say, not much and very little.

I note with amusement that Spanish speaking people still have a tendency to write this way in English as they do in Spanish.  There is a taste to the words, something intrinsic to them that renders them uniquely  important not just as constructs of a sentence.  Their order, the languid pace, the setup, the tendril-like clauses that reach out in all directions pushing and pulling and twisting all feel like some kind of full sensual body massage of prose.

Is it a Catholic centric culture that shows less willingness to own the future?  It is not my place, I might say.  I am but a conduit.  The journey is what it is, to endure, to accept the way as it unfolds according to God’s plan.  Should it transpire too quickly, all enjoyment, all suffering, and by default all Grace is lost.

I’m not sure I buy it myself, but it does explain a lot.

I’ve been using and abusing Gutenberg.org a lot lately.  It’s a web site dedicated to public domain books, mostly in English but there is variety in other languages too including Beowulf in Old English.  You can basically find anything you want that was published before 1923.  They have ebook formats, pdfs, html documents, and a lot of audio books submitted by supporters.  All the classics are there.

I’ve been reading Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan and John Carter of Mars books to the kids at bed time.  I loved those books as a kid and now despite limited library space and an unwillingness to store any more books in this house, I can read the classics to my heart’s content.

So here’s the work flow:  Download a book at gutenberg.org, open it up in konqueror or firefox and when you come upon a strange archaic word pop it into your kdict public domain dictionary reader and peruse several different definitions and usage entries.  I’m simply amazed at how awesome the public domain is and how many volunteers have come together to make it all possible.  Consider donating to gutenberg.org.

I just noticed that the character of Tarzan went into the public domain in 1998.  Is it a coincidence that Disney’s movie was released in 1999?  Hmmm.

I was at a client’s office working on their office server this Thursday.  In addition to all the crawling around under tables and dealing with cables, switches, and routers, I also have been re-creating their website.  I was getting short on photos.  "Do you have any more photos I could use?" I asked their accountant/onsite help desk guy, "I’ve exhausted all of the ones I’ve shot myself and I need some more."

"Oh yeah, we have tons," he replied, "One of our members is a photographer.  He has a photography firm and he takes all the pictures for us.  El es un fotografo buenismo y toma fotos increibles.  (he is a really good photographer and takes incredible pictures). I’ll burn you a CD."  And he disappeared to his computer and the burning.

I went back to trying to figure out why Samba had decided to stop working, dumping core, and refusing connections.  Bizarre. It was doing something all right, just not what it was supposed to do.*

After a few minutes, he returned.  "Here," he said, dropping the CD in my hand, "This is from an event from last week."

I opened my laptop and anxious to see these beautiful photos, clicked it into the drive tray.  After hearing all about the photographer and his mad skills, I prepared myself for a huge pile of awesome photos for the website (http://beta.hechoenpr.com/) This was going to make my life easier.  I’ll have more to choose from.  I opened the CD and started browsing.  I furrowed my brow.  "These photos aren’t really all that good," I said, "They’re kind of bad, actually.  I thought you said this guy was as good."

"Oh, I’m sorry, those are actually photos I took.  I have a crappy little camera.  They are just snapshots."

"Hmm," I replied.  "After all the talk about this professional guy, I was worried.  Okay, I’m glad.  Do you want to know how to make your shots better?  You could improve a lot with just a few simple tips, even with a crappy camera."

"My wife takes nice pictures," he said. "Her photos are a lot better.  She has a lot of artists in her family.  Her brother is an artist."  I could tell he was a little embarrassed by my accidental bluntness.  But, hell, I’ll just go with it.  I am not a mealy-mouthed type.  He could spent the rest of his life taking shitty photos and never have anyone give him any pointers "to save his feelings," but I wanted his photos to say something or at least fake saying something, anything but stand still.

"Yes, an artist probably has some formation and training for using the space and telling a story, showing action or whatever.  I have a couple of basic tricks to go from beginner to amateur.  Do you want to know what they are?"

"First, is the rule of thirds.  It goes like this.  Take your canvas and divide it into thirds, horizontally and vertically.  Your intersecting points are interest areas.  For example, why do shots of the ocean always fail to live up to the moment?  I’m sure you’ve taken lots of shots of the ocean, beach, la isla, and they never come out the way you remember them, right?"

"Yes, pictures never capture how beautiful it was," he agreed.  He was shuffling his feet and seemed to be losing interest.  They are forever polite and have little capacity to deal with uncomfortable moments.

Hang in there a little longer, and I’ll have you fixed up, I thought.  "Okay, so a little trick for the ocean is to make sure that the sky always takes up either one third or two thirds of the frame.  Never half.  If the ocean is two thirds, the sky is one third.  If the sky is one third, t­he ocean is two thirds.  If the ocean is in the middle, the way your eye perceives it, you end up with a boring shot.  The shitty picture that you all know and ends up in a box with the thousands of others."

I continued, "If you are shooting people, make sure you get close.  If it’s a group, apart from a planned group portrait, try to focus in on one or two people.  Basically, just get closer.­  When in doubt, get closer.  Those are my two tips, and they will cover 99% of circumstances.  As you improve, and believe me, I’m no professional, you can break these guidelines.  But to start out, they’ll help you turn snapshots into art.  Really great photographers ca­n tell amazing stories with bigger groups, more complex elements, and from farther away, but the beginner doesn’t know how how to balance so many things at first.  Just be patient and get closer.  Stick to one or two elements and tell a simple story."

­­­

­"Okay, thanks James," and he excused himself.  I could tell he was only being polite.  It’s probably why his pictures will continue to be shitty.  But that is another story.  I decided that I was going to write down what good art looks like, feels like, and is.  Since I’m a multi-disciplined person I think I am qualified to define what makes good art in a variety of media.  I think I can even tie it into what makes a good battle plan and a good life.  I use the word "good" because to be "great" you’ve got to dedicate yourself to one thing.  To be merely good, requires only a little bit of passion and purpose.

So let us begin, shall we?

The photography/graphic arts "rule-of-thirds" is really just a trick.  You trick your viewer into believing something is happening in the frame.  Take the sky and ocean example.  Put the ocean in the middle and it is stagnant, locked in stasis with the sky, a stalemate, neither giving nor receiving.  The sky and ocean just sit there.  The photo says nothing and gives nothing either way.  Should, however, the sky yield to the ocean or the ocean to the sky, now you’ve got something.  Movement.  Purpose.  It is small, yes, but with the ocean spilling into the sky or the sky pushing down the ocean you have begun a process  It is this something, this movement, that makes the picture interesting.  Bingo.  It’s not the greatest picture in the world, but neither is it the worst.

Instead of shooting a person right smack in the middle of the shot, put them off to one side.  Which way are they looking?  Are they leaving the frame, or entering it.  If they are in the middle, most of the time it’s a boring photograph because the perception is that nothing is happening and the space around the sub­ject it distracting or wasted.  Maybe you should crop it or get closer or offset the subject.

­

There’s a lot of clutter behind, little Mr. Asier, but instead of putting him in the middle frame with clutter all around, I have his motion moving in frame with the clutter blurred and de-emphasized.   A great photographer might have planned this better, but sometimes you just have to shoot what you have in front of you.  With a few simple tips you can turn ho-hum snapshot into something you and others will adore.

Beginning writers are told to show don’t tell, to use adverbs sparingly.  Don’t tell me about what someone said or did.  Show me.  If someone was sad, don’t tell me:  He was sad.  Show me how he was sad.  And don’t say:  He walked sadly.  Tell me he walked without picking up his feet and the sound they made as they dragged over the dirty floor.  Tell me how his clothes drooped, or how his hair was flat and oily or how when he answered questions he mumbled or looked away and didn’t meet your gaze.   The key is that good writers can take any subject and make it interesting and put you in the moment.  Take this passage for example about coming home, sitting on the toilet and through a simple discovery realizing true love.  Sonny, true love is the greatest thing in the world. Except for a nice MLT: a mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomato is ripe. They’re so perky, I love that.  But I digress.

From http://sigg3.net/:

Thinking about this, I smiled as I made my way up the godforsaken five floors I have to climb every fucking day to get to the apartment. I got inside, put the groceries down and headed for the bathroom. It felt good, if you have to know. (And reading this, I suppose you do.) Went back into the kitchen, picked out the beer and put ‘em in the fridge, put the frozen pizza on the table and turned on the oven. That’s when I saw it. At first I couldn’t believe it, it just couldn’t be true. Was it really real? I swallowed solemnly while revering every inch of the realization that crept upon me like a slow sunrise in the time frame of geological foreplay.

Lady C had actually taken out the trash.

All of it.

All by herself.

from: http://www.sigg3.net/b2.php?p=1346

Note the spare use of adverbs, the build up, each mundane detail, the slow difficult climb, taking a dump, putting some groceries down, and the frozen pizza (how clever).  Each serves as contrast to the final realization: LOVE.  But not just any love.  Our writer has cleverly placed the ultimate force of the universe within the confines of a small act of refuse disposal.  Doubly clever.  Touché.  It doesn’t get any better than that folks, and is basically the rule of thirds.  Contrast, movement, purpose.  Some people do it naturally, some do not.  The key is, however, anybody can learn this.

A little imbalance allows your electrons to flow. 

Nature abhors a vacuum.

There must be movement.  Movement for movement’s sake is okay for the amateur, but your goal is purpose of course, willful story telling.

If you had to sum up good art in one word it would be "contrast."

* it ended up being a GCC 3.4.6 hardened compiler problem.  I don’t now what specifically, but after upgrading to the 4.x series GCC Samba stopped dumping core.

You know what makes a great cleaning song?  – Tableau IV. Fête Populaire de la Semaine grasse (vers le soir), the fourth act of the ballet Petrouchka by Igor Stravinsky.  It’s a series of lively dances, triumphal, tragic, fanciful, and full of folly – much like my kitchen in all its disasterous dimensions. 

Within my kitchen, there is the toil of the ants scouring the counters for small crumbs to take back to their lair and feed their families.  I know too well how they shall never again see their homes as I crush them and wash them down the sink. 

Then there are the remnants of the children with their messy plates, forks, glasses half full of liquid.  Their little spirits are too lively to sit still for more than a moment, yet their bodies are small, incapable of pacifying the mess of life.   They make do as best they can given their small statures.

Laura too is represented here in the menagerie, for all that we consume was created by her hands, lovingly prepared for us without reservation.  There are the burned pans, stuck rice, splatters of oil and tomato sauce.  Disorder is an unavoidable bi-product of creation, I think.

Would it be better for the magician to have never brought this kitchen to life?  The tremendous gift that is a kitchen comes with an inevitable cost: The Cleaning

Is a kitchen worth it?

Someone send me a maid!

I’ve been messing around with Qtpfsgui, a High Dynamic Range (HDR) photo tool for Linux, Mac, and Windows. There are number of processes that on­e can invoke to increase the dynamic range of photos from RAW captures or multiple tripod exposures, but first, an example.

This was taken at dusk at a hotel pool in Rio Grande, Puerto Rico.  Very scary sky.

The basic concept is that your camera can’t really capture a bright sky with a dark landscape.  Set the exposure for your land, and the sky is washed out.  Lower your exposure for the sky, and the land comes out too dark.  Wouldn’t it be nice if you could combine the two and fudge the photo to look more like your eye sees it?  The best way is with a tripod and multiple exposures with different settings, but I’m lazy and I want results NOW.

If you’re shooting RAW in your digital camera, you can capture a little bit more dynamic range than what you see when you export it to a jpg.  Try using an HDR tool to pull out a little more dynamic range or, in my case, heavily process it to give you that funky black velvet painting effect.  Meh, whatever floats your boat.  A lot of people seem to like these images.  ‘Course people seem to loathe them too.

The original photo looks like this:

It’s a nice photo, but the first one is quite dramatic, no?

Here’s another dramatic shot of the Mississippi and Missouri River confluence, shot on a cold day in December from the Missouri side.

I had been itching to do some artwork for a Christmas card, both for personal and our company, Altamente. I tried a bunch of things, but ­I settled on this: ­­

We did a short run at a local printer.  Turned out very nicely.  I printed the friends/family one at Shutterfly.  I ended up being happier with the local printer.  Next time…

I wanted something that was typical to Puerto Rico, communicated home, holidays, but wasn’t wintery or traditional. It would be silly, of course, since we live in the tropics. Not all Christmas seasons are winter wonderlands. Personally, I’m not too keen on religious themes either. Not that I don’t like them, it’s just that their export is not as easy as one would believe when your clients (this card above) and friends (another card that doesn’t have the "Altamente" logo) are all over the map. I wanted them to get a card that they could happily put on their wall and enjoy, something different but cool. It turned out nicely, I think.

­May we open the door to the hope that
is rebo­rn during Christmas. ­

That 200­8 b­e a year
where social commitment
and excellence are
the foundation of prosperity.

These are our most sincere wishes,

It sounds nicer in Spanish. Laura came up with that text. I used a font called BernhardMod BT.  I liked the way the taller letters and capitals are much taller than the lowercase.  There was something about this serif font that evoked elegance and an Old World feel.

­

­Typical D­oor
Spanish Colonial Style
Old San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Taken from this photograph by me.

I always snap pictures of these doors in Old San Juan. ­­­Anyway, I did the drawing in Inkscape and print layout in Scribus­. ­

What is going on here? I’m tapped out. I’ve had all kinds of interesting adventures and conversations, but I just can’t seem to put them down here. I guess, I should just take a deep breath and realize that sometimes the rivulets of artistic juices run in other directions.

I’ve recently started drawing and cartooning again. Laura has a project for a children’s educational curriculum, and I offered to help out with the illustrations.

That’s Don Pedro, the gardener. I got myself a cheapo Genius tablet (here’s a review) that works just great under Linux. Wacoms are in the hundreds of dollars, but this Genius was only $40 and works great. I’m using Inkscape for sketching and inking. When I’m done, I have a scalable vector graphic (SVG) which I can use, recolor, modify, and export.

Look for more artwork, cartoons, and projects in the coming months.

Once I learn the medium a little better, I’ll post some tutorials about working in Inkscape (or any vector graphic program for that matter).

Plot is a four letter word. -- Alex Keegan

Plot is the picture frame. -- Me

Plot is like the picture frame. A frame is something that all pictures need to some degree, but a beautiful frame with a black velvet Elvis painting isn't going into the Louvre any time soon. Conversely, the most beautiful, insightful, imaginative painting in the world isn't going to suffer much in a weak frame. The picture makes the frame, the frame accents the picture.

This is forgotten all too much in all forms of storytelling, most notably movies. Repeat after me. Plot is the picture frame. Take a look at the most recent Star Wars movies. What could be a Tolkien-esque epic tale of the rise and fall of empires, people, relationships, ends up being a b-movie with flat characters, starring the computer generated imagery. The plot is so intricate, so twisted, so melodramatic, and overcompensating of a weak painting that is falls as flat as pastel sailboats hung above the couch.

It's the characters stupid.

I am re-reading a book at the moment, Stendhal's The Red and the Black. Wow, what a plotless book. This kid Julien is wandering around ala Huck Finn (albeit an adult Huck Finn, ahem), listlessly, pointlessly. Things happen to him. He winds up with a rich family in the country. A seminary in the city, and finally as a rich city family's secretary. *yawn*. Pretty boring stuff, eh? The novel is set in the early 1800's. Perhaps it's one of the Sense and Sensibility type period pieces... you know, the ones that women like. But there's something about this book, something that grabs me and won't let me go. Maybe it's the unlikely protagonist, Julien, his inability to be honest with himself, who in the end is honest with himself despite his attempts to culture cynicism.

The Red and the Black is perhaps the most beautiful painting in the world placed simply in a beveled piece of matte paper. It is not dialog driven, plot driven, situationally driven. Ask me what has happened serially, and I would have problems. It violates the show, don't tell rule beaten into all beginning writers. Perhaps as you mature you get to break some rules, but geez, it would seem Stendhal's downright lazy. Note the following passage as the scene is dictated in the most abstract manner, with little window into the actual goings on, the details:

I must drink some punch and dance a lot, she told herself; I'll pick the best of the crowd, and make an impression at all costs. Good, here comes that impertinent celebrity the Comte de Fervaques. She accepted his invitation; they dance. It's a matter of seeing, she thought, which of the two of us will be the more impertinent; but so that I can make proper fun of him, I must get him talking. Soon all the rest of the quadrille only dance for appearances' sake. No one wished to miss any of Mathilde's stinging repartee. M. de Fervaques was getting flustered, and as he could only produce elegant phrases instead of ideas, he was making faces; Mathilde, who was in a bad mood, was merciless to him and made an enemy out of him. She danced until daybreak and at length withdrew in a state of terrible fatigue. But in the carriage she went and used up the small amount of strength she had left on making herself sad and miserable. She'd been despised by Julien and couldn't despise him.

He does this a lot, tells you what the people are talking about, or hints at some dialog, but never reveals it. It would seem lazy perhaps. Maybe he couldn't think of the clever things that he was putting into people's mouths. Easier to just talk about them instead of showing them. It would seem that way, but then there are passages that suck you over the event horizon into the most awful wonderful despair. Here the Madam de Rênal the wife of Mousier de Rênal, the richest most powerful man in Verrières, has fallen in love with Julien. She is his senior by 10 years and is now consumed with guilt over her passion.

Shortly after the return to Vergy, Stanislas-Xavier the youngest child threw a fever; M^me de Rênal was suddenly overcome by terrible remorse. It was the first time she had reproached herself for her love with any consistency; she seemed to understand, as if by a miracle, how gross was the immorality she had allowed herself to get caught up in. In spite of her deeply religious nature, up until then she had not considered the enormity of her crime in the eyes of God.

In the past, at the convent of the Sacred Heart, she had loved God with passion; she started to fear him likewise in her new situation. The battles which ravaged her soul were all the more terrible because there was nothing rational in her fear. Julien discovered that any attempt at rationalization aggravated rather than soothed her: she took it as the language of hell. However, since Julien himself was very fond of little Stanislas, he was more welcome when talked to her of the boy's illness. This soon took a very serious turn. Then unremitting remorse deprived M^me de Rênal even of the ability to sleep; she retreated into a desperate silence: had she opened her mouth, it would have been to confess her crime to God and to mankind.

'I entreat you,' Julien would say to her as soon as they found themselves alone, 'don't say anything to anyone; let me be the only recipient of your troubles. If you still love me, don't say anything”: you words can't take the fever away from our little Stanislas.'

But his endeavors to console her had no effect; he did not know that M^me de Rênal had taken it into her head that to appease the wrath of the jealous Almighty, she had to hate Julien or else see her son die. It was because she felt she could not hate her lover that she was wretched.

'Keep away from me!' she said one day. 'In the name of God, leave this house: it's your presence here that's killing my son.'

'God is punishing me,' she added in a low voice, 'he is just. I worship his justice; my crime is horrendous, and there I was living without remorse! It was the first sign of abandoning God” I must be doubly punished.'

Julien was deeply touched. He could not detect any hypocrisy of exaggeration in this. She thinks she's killing her son by loving me, and yet, poor thing, she loves me more than her son. This is the source, I'm convinced, of the remorse that's killing her; these are truly noble sentiments. But how did I manage to inspire a love like this: I'm so poor, so badly brought up, so ignorant, even sometimes so crude in my ways?

One night, the child's fever was at its height. Around two in the morning M de Rênal came to see him. The child, racked with fever, was exceedingly flushed and failed to recognize his father. Suddenly M^me de Rênal flung herself at her husband's fee” Julien saw that she was going to confess everything and ruin herself forever.

By good luck M de Rênal was very put out by this strange gesture.

'Goodnight! Goodnight!' he said as he turned to leave.

'No, listen to me!' exclaimed his wife kneeling before him and trying to hold him back. 'You must learn the whole truth. It's my fault that my son is dying. I gave life to him, and I am taking it from him. Heaven is punishing me, in the eyes of God I'm guilty of murder. I must bring about my own downfall and my own humiliation; perhaps this sacrifice will appease the Lord.'

If M de Rênal had been a man of any imagination, he would have understood everything.

'Romantic nonsense,' he exclaimed pushing away his wife who was trying to clasp his knees. 'This is all a whole lot of romantic nonsense! Julien, summon the doctor at daybreak.'

And off he went to bed. M^me de Rênal fell on her knees, half unconscious, thrusting Julien away with a convulsive gesture when he tried to come to her aid.

Julien stood amazed.

So this is adultery! He said... Could it possibly be that those two-face priests... are right? That men who commit so many sins are privileged to know the real workings of sin? What a peculiar state of affairs!

For twenty minutes now since M de Rênal had withdrawn Julien had watched the woman he loved kneeling with her head resting on the child's little bed, motionless and almost unconscious. Here's a woman of superior genius plunged in the very depths of misery because of knowing me, he said.

Time is racing by. What can I do for her? I must make up my mind. In this situation it isn't a question of what I want any more. What do I care about other people and their insipid little comedies? What can I do for her... leave her? But I'd be leaving her alone in the grip of the most appealing grief. Her automaton of a husband is more of a hindrance than a help to her. He'll say some harsh word to her through being so crude; she may go mad and fling herself out of the window.

If I leave her, if I stop watching over her, she'll confess everything to him. And who knows, perhaps in spite of the inheritance she's due to bring him he'll cause a scandal. She may tell all, great heavens! To that b... idiot of a Father Maslon, who uses a six-year-old's illness as an excuse for not budging from this house, and with an ulterior motive too. In her grief and her fear of God she forgets everything she knows about the man; she only sees the priest.

'Go away!' said M^me de Rênal to him all of a sudden, opening her eyes.

'I'd lay down my life over and over again to know what would be of greatest help to you,' Julien replied. 'I've never loved you so much, my darling angel, or rather it's only now that I begin to adore you as you deserve. What will become of me far away from you, with the knowledge that you're unhappy through my fault! But let's not think about my suffering. All right, I'll go, my love. But if I leave you, if I cease to watch over you, to be constantly there between you and your husband, you'll tell him all, you'll ruin yourself. Just think how ignominiously he'll drive you from his house; the whole of Verrières, the whole of Besançon will talk of this scandal. You'll be made into the guilty party; you'll never get over the shame of it...'

'That's what I want,' she exclaimed, rising to her feet. 'I shall suffer: so much the better.'

'But you'll also bring about his own ruin with this abominable scandal!'

'But I'll be humiliating myself, I'll be flinging myself into the mire; and perhaps in so doing I shall save my son perhaps this humiliation in front of everyone is a form of public penitence? As far as I can judge in my weakness, isn't this the greatest sacrifice I can make to God?... Perhaps he will deign to accept my humiliation and leave me my son! Show me another more painful sacrifice and I'm ready for it.'

'Let me punish myself. I'm guilty too. Do you want me to retreat to the Trappist monastery? The austerity of life there may appease your God... Oh heavens! Why can't I take Stanislas's illness upon myself...?'

'Oh, you really love him, you do!' said M^me de Rênal, getting up and flinging herself into his arms.

At the same moment she pushed him away in horror.

'I believe you! I believe you!' she went on, sinking to her knees again. 'Oh my only friend! Oh why aren't you Stanislas's father? Then it wouldn't be a horrible crime to love you more than your son.'

'Will you allow me to stay, and to love you from now on just like a brother? It's the only only expiation that makes sense; it may appease the wrath of the Almighty.'

'And what about me?' she cried, getting up and clasping Julien's head in both hands, and gazing at it at arm's length, 'what about me, am I to love you like a brother? Is it in my power to love you like a brother?'

Tears were starting to run down Julien's face.

'I shall obey you,' he said falling at her feet. 'I shall obey you whatever you order me to do; it's all that's left for me. My mind is struck blind; I can't see what to do. If I leave you, you'll tell your husband everything; you'll ruin yourself and him too. There's no way, after this ridicule, that he'll ever be chosen for the National Assembly. If I stay, you'll think me the cause of your son's death, and you'll die of grief. Do you want to try out the effect of my departure? If you like, I'll punish myself for your wrongdoing by leaving you for a week. I'll go and spend it in a retreat of your choosing. In the abbey at Bray-le-Haut, for instance: but swear to me that during my absence you won't confess anything to your husband. Just think that I won't ever be able to come back if you say anything.'

She promised, he left, but was recalled after two days.

'It's impossible for me to keep my oath without you. I shall tell my husband if you aren't there constantly to order with your eyes to keep silent. Each hour of this abominable life seems to me to last a whole day.'

At last heaven took pity on this wretched mother. Gradually Stanislas emerged from danger. But the illusion was shattered, her reason had grasped the extent of her sin; she was unable to regain her stability. Her remorse remained, and it was as you would expect in a heart of such sincerity. Her life was heaven and hell: hell when she did not have Julien with her, heaven when she was at his feet. 'I don't have any illusions left,' she said to him even at times when she dared to indulge her love to the full. 'I'm damned, damned beyond remission. You are young, you yielded to my seduction, heaven may forgive you; but I am damned. I know from a sure sign: I'm afraid. Who wouldn't be afraid at the sight of hell? But deep down I don't repent. I'd commit my sin again if it had to be committed. If heaven would just refrain from punishing me in this world and through my children, then I shall have more than I deserve, but what about you at least, my own Julien,' she exclaimed at other moments, 'are you happy? Do I love you enough for your liking?'

It is in the passage that, I feel that one would have to be dead to not empathize with such pathos. Sure, who today would really believe that God would punish them for a transgression of the flesh. I think most people today would see M^me de Rênal's plight and send her for psychological help. However, even within the story, we note the Julien a seminarian sees her fear as folly, but he gets sucked in too. He can't help but feel her anguish, the torment at the reality that she believes to be true. So it is his love that allows him to accept her for her beliefs and look for a way to diminish her grief. I don't think you have to be a scholar or a college educated person to get this, do you? It may be old, with outdated mores, but the timelessness of the love, the undying, uncompromising love is universal.

That's what a story is all about... plot? Bah! Plot is a four letter word. Plot is the frame. This book has no plot. And you know what? All the greatest works of art don't need it either. TV show voted to be the greatest of the century: Seinfeld, a show about nothing: no plot, just interesting characters. And that, my friends, is that.

I’ve thought a lot about this subject, that is, the importance of art, high art and how it relates to fine dining and fast food.

Take, for example, the recent changes in NPR’s Performance Today where they have cut back on commentary, history, and music appreciation in lieu of just more music. Just the facts ma’am. It seems that people just want some more drive time relaxation, mood music to which to fall asleep, or just to cover the naked backdrop of their lives with sonic tapestries.

A lot of people would call such an indictment pure snobbery, that classical music has long been a refuge of the rich, an inaccessible art form protected by high fences of academia, class, and prohibitive economies. Classical music becomes a talisman of protection from the unwashed masses. As a stone it is used more often to build walls than an inviting warm home.

I watch both sides rail against each other, especially with the most recent changes in Performance Today. Classical music snobs lament the dumbing down of the program, saying essentially that there are no more refuges in which to hide from the "…pop artists, many of whom don’t deserve the time of day." Pop aficionados, offended at someone calling their art form less than art, react with similar negativity against the classical music community, calling it, "Music by dead people" "Irrelevant" and "Out of touch."

Well, I’m here to settle the debate once and for all. Now take careful notes here, because this is going to be the final word.

Classical music is to music what fine dining is to food, or what The Mission is to movie making, or what For Whom the Bell Tolls is to literature. Conversely, Pop music is to music, what McDonalds (I prefer Wendy’s though) is to food, or Star Wars is to movie making, or Tom Clancy is to literature. It’s that simple, folks.

Now, before you get offended let me explain. Before concluding from the above that I prefer or respect one genre over the other, let me just say that I eat "low art" food more frequently than I dine finely. Dining finely costs more, for one. $100 per plate is pretty steep, I’d say. However, for the creation of an accomplished chef, personally crafted for me, cooked to perfection, seasoned with skill, and served artfully, I’m willing to give of myself. But I don’t just have to give monetarily. In order to appreciate the creation, I have got to know a bit about it. That takes experience, study, and refined palette. I personally am but a student, a worm, unworthy perhaps of the creation put in front of me, but I approach it with gusto, trying to soak all of the experience from the plate in front of me, tasting the history, the study, the preparation, the ingredients. Whew! It is an infrequent experience which leaves me exhausted and satisfied to the very depths of my soul. I am filled to an overflowing, babbling, quivering mass. To do it more often would seem gluttonous, a transgression upon the soul.

I think one of the most extraordinary movies I have ever seen is The Mission with Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons. It is a deep drama about Jesuit missionaries in Brazil in their quest to keep the slave traders of Portugal at bay. There is political intrigue, the Catholic leadership making worldly political decisions in contrast to the idealistic keepers of the truth, the Jesuits. They clash, and the obvious outcome is the destruction of a people and the death of the idealists.  You finish watching this movie and are run over, depressed at the savagery of man, tired from the depth of sadness, and wishing fervently that the movie could have turned out differently but knowing it could not. How often could I watch such a movie without losing all hope for humanity? Certainly, I could not watch it more than just a few times. In fact, we own it, but it has been years since I have watched it. I am not ready, it is too rich, too bankrupting, too indulgent, too much to bear.

For Whom the Bell Tolls is by far my favorite piece of literature. In much the same way as I relish fine dining and fine movie making, Hemingway has crafted a setting, a time, a world that is at the same time compelling as it is repulsive. The drama of an American fighting for idealism during the Spanish Civil War, a prelude to World War II, his love, his politics, his sacrifice, draws me in and at the same time fills me with much sadness. I want the book never to end. When I reread it, I get progressively slower hoping that it would never end that I could preserve the literary reality forever. But alas, it always does end, Robert Jordan does indeed die, and the Fascists do take control of Spain for many years. Sigh, it’s so real, it envelopes me, takes me away, soaks in to the depth of my soul and I must put the book down for for a time or risk losing myself.

So where do I go from here? I surely cannot dine on fine cuisine every day. I have not the money, time, nor am I willing to invest of myself so frequently so much. I cannot watch The Mission more than but a few times every decade, and I cannot read For Whom the Bell Tolls or run the risk of over nourishing and mineral poisoning my soul.

Most of our lives are spent eating "pop culture", consuming "pop" food, watching "pop" movies and tv, and reading "pop" books. Pop is this case comes from Popular, or in Latin, "of the people." These are the things that sustain us, folks. The are mostly fillers, things with which to fortify the body, mind, and soul short term. We cannot exist without them, I think. We must nourish ourselves daily without paying such a heavy price, either economically or spiritually. Sometimes a burger is just a burger, a flick just a flick, and a rag just a rag.

But neither can we sustain "life" based SOLEY on them. Without high art, we run the risk of blandly floating through existence, neither aware of its depth, appreciative of its dimensions, and never ever coming fully to our senses. It is this that I feel is the most important. Experiences that demand a high price of us cannot be consumed every day, but MUST be consumed at some point. Consider them the trace elements necessary for life and health.

I’ve been listening to Performance Today, a classical music program from NPR, every day for the past two months. There’s nothing that I’ve enjoyed more than my daily dose of classical music, commentary, and history. Today, Fred Child related an interesting footnote to one of Haydn’s works. Haydn’s newest piece was anticipated with great expectation. His publisher was taking pre-orders on the score while Haydn finished it up. That’s where I began to think.

Imagine, no CD’s, records, tapes, broadcasts. People (although probably only the wealthier class) actually got all excited about a new score coming out. They went out and bought the paper copy, brought it home, learned, practiced, and played it. That was pretty much the only method of reproduction that existed. If you wanted to hear a performance you’d have to go to one. You as a listener didn’t control when and where the performances happened, so if you wanted music on demand, you had to play it.

Contrast this simpler form of music on demand to today’s digital streaming, napster, cd’s, Direct TV, DVD’s etc. These days you have access to thousands of hours of music at the touch of a button, from anywhere, while you’re jogging, driving, sitting, or studying. Where are we going? Obviously consumption of music has risen each year since CD’s where introduced. Since Napster came along, CD sales have increased over 50%. I’m sure the average music collection of Americans has grown considerably as well, both in pirated and legal works.

I pondered all this while listening to music and enjoying myself. It was easy, I sat there and listened. Imagine how long it would have taken me to write Bach’s Passion of Matthew? It’s a lot easier to listen to it than to write it, or play it. Playing it would require me to study it, Bach, and other performances by Bach devoteés. I would probably have to learn other pieces by Bach first, study technique, history… wow. That’s years of preparation, careful dissection, and practice. It is certainly easier to listen to it.

However, I do so wish that I had the time to learn to perform or write. One day, I keep saying, I will dedicate myself to learning an instrument. I’d like to be able to express myself in music. Sure it is infinitely more work than listening or consuming, but to create something… this is the joy of being human. I add maybe one or two pieces of music to the world, in my own little corner. Maybe just friends and family hear it. Maybe just Laura. Who knows, but it adds a little piece of sustenance to our hungry world. It maybe feeds someone’s soul just a bit. No one artist can create the world’s repertoire, just as no one can right all the wrongs of the world, feed every starving person, or save all the children. But if we all do a little, take a leap, give of ourselves a bit instead of consuming, eating, stuffing our faces with more and more and more every day, maybe then.

So music is big business there days. "What is going to sell?" the Sony execs ask. Creation is falling on fewer and fewer shoulders all the time. Orchestras around the country have been failing at an alarming rate. Pop music, never a bastion of creative integrity has gone from hiding pre-fabbed bands, keeping the secret that Milli Vanilli didn’t actually, write, sing or produce their own songs, to just doing it right there on the TV for millions to see. Who cares if they have talent. They look good, they can dance… the corporate interests will take care of the slick packaging. Isn’t it funny that there is more food in America than ever before, but more and more of it is being grown by fewer and fewer people. Is this how the disease, pesticides, and antibiotics have sneaked in? Is anybody at the wheel? Who’s driving this bus?

It’s all connected. You name it, our military power is being consolidated into fewer and fewer hands. Smart this and smart that. You only need one person these days to take out a city. Take our Government (please); far from the days of grass roots support and involvement, we get all of our information from CNN. Just serve it up steaming hot and we’ll suck it down without even a second thought. Does it matter that it’s not quality, that it doesn’t demand back from you? No, I’d rather just sit here. No wonder America is the fattest country on the planet. Is it also why we’re the hungriest as well?

And there I sat. Wasn’t it a wonderful dream.