winslowjunker

Switching modes

Tom Hardy — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 22:24:30 +0000

Sometimes we can get obsessed with the question, “What’s in it for me?” Let someone make a suggestion or ask a favor and we can almost feel our eyes glaze over for a second while we process their words through that mantra. Here’s a little different approach:

Whither the modern Rama?

Tom Hardy — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 22:12:42 +0000

“There comes a time in the history of every civilisation when, for the sake of human dignity, men turn their backs on it.” Aubrey Menen, The Ramayana, as told by Aubrey Menen (1954)

The Michael Leunig Website

Tom Hardy — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 21:01:13 +0000

Check out the Michael Leunig website. Australian cartoonist and artist. I’ve always thought of him as the kind of guy it’d be fun to live next door to.

Visions, Illusions

Tom Hardy — Fri, 13 May 2011 06:06:43 +0000

Roaming the web for background on Don Quijote, which I’m reading for the first time, I ran across this portrait in a style completely appropriate for that ‘ingenious’ gentleman of La Mancha. Take some time; absorb.

And if you care to see more work of this amazing Mexican artist, click on the painting, or try here or here.

Figuring Out Humans

Tom Hardy — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 23:11:05 +0000

“Out of all the things in the world that we try to explain, human behaviour is surely the one that we work hardest at, and the one with which we find most difficulty. There is an obvious problem in the case of other people’s behaviour, because so much of the evidence is unavailable to us. All we know of how they see the world, and what they feel about it, is what they are both able to articulate and choose to reveal, and what we can infer from their actions and appearances. But this inference, and even our understanding of what they tell us, depend upon relating the evidence to our own way of seeing the world, our own feelings, and our own behaviour.” — Michael Frayn, The Human Touch

And we’re not all that clear on those last three, I might add.

So don’t fret

Tom Hardy — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 23:04:01 +0000

“[You] try to come at people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or hope or arrogance; . . . you take them on with an open mind, as equals, man to man, as we used to say, and yet you never fail to get them wrong. . . . You get them wrong before you meet them, while you’re anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you’re with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again. Since the same generally goes for them with you, the whole thing is really a dazzling illusion empty of all perception, an astonishing farce of misperception. And yet what are we to do . . . , so ill-equipped are we all to envision one another’s interior workings and invisible aims? . . . The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It’s getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That’s how we know we’re alive: we’re wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that–well, lucky you.” — Philip Roth, American Pastoral (via Philip Roth quotes)