Fear: Are you being followed by a moon shadow?sappiamo tutto capiamo poco

drawing collage by marguerita

Scientists generally define fear as a negative emotional state triggered by the presence of a stimulus (the snake) that has the potential to cause harm, and anxiety as a negative emotional state in which the threat is not present but anticipated. We sometimes confuse the two: When someone says he is afraid he will fail an exam or get caught stealing or cheating, he should, by the definitions above, be saying he is anxious instead.
But the truth is, the line between fear and anxiety can get pretty thin and fuzzy.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/anatomy-of-fear/?ref=global-home

Of PASSION and an Imaginary Dialogue avec Hamlet

drawing by marguerita

Hui Tzu said to Chuang Tzu,'Can a man really become passionless? Chuang Tzu said, ,' He can.' Hui Tzu said,' A man without passions cannot be called a man."
Chuang Tzu said,'Tao gave him substance,Heaven gave him form", how is it possible not to call him a man?'
Hui Tzu said,'I would rather say,Granted that he is still a man, how is it possible for him to be passionless?'
Chuang Tzu said,'You do not understand what I mean when I say " passionless".
When I say " passionless" I mean that a man does not let love or hate do damage within, that he falls in with the way in which things happen of themselves, and does not exploit life'.
Hui Tzu said,' If he does not exploit life, what is the use of his having a body?

And Hamlet says:

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied over with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pitch and moment,

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action.

Thought and action seem to pull against each other, the former annulling the possibility of the latter.


Excerpt from Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China by Arthur Wiley

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/09/let-be-an-answer-to-hamlets-question/?hp

Montaigne:Judge yourself

drawing collage by marguerita

Like Socrates, Montaigne claims that what he knows best is the fact that he does not know anything much.
To undermine common beliefs and attitudes, Montaigne draws on tales of other times and places, on his own observations and on a barrage of arguments in the ancient Pyrhonian skeptical tradition, which encouraged the suspension of judgment as a middle way between dogmatic assertion and equally dogmatic denial.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/books/review/montaignes-moment.html?hp

Of Kerfuffle,Gogol,The Moon,Noses and other. feelings.....

drawing by marguerita


"The moon is made by some lame cooper, and you can see the idiot has no idea about moons at all.
He put in a creosoted rope and some wood oil; and this has led to such a terrible stink all over the earth that you have to hold your nose.
Another reason the moon is such a tender globe it that people just cannot live on it any more,
and all that's left alive there are noses.
This is also why we cannot see our own noses -
they're all on the moon."
(from Diary of a Madman, 1835)

Nikolay Gogol was born in Sorochintsi, Ukraine, and grew up on his parents' country estate. His real surname was Ianovskii,
but the writer's grandfather had taken the name 'Gogol' to claim a noble Cossack ancestry.
Gogol's father was an educated and gifted man, who wrote plays, poems, and sketches in Ukrainian.

“A peacock without feathers is like a very unappealing, big chicken,” he said, adding, “There are a lot of people like that.”- Rabbi Steinsaltz

Aleph Art box by marguerita

The original Talmud, written in a mixture of old Hebrew and Aramaic, is all about learning.

The act of learning, according to the rabbi, is the “central pillar” or “backbone” of Judaism — what connects Jews with the Almighty above, with their roots below and with one another.

“This book is essential for our existence,” Rabbi Steinsaltz said.

The Talmud, a compilation and analysis of oral Jewish law and ethics governing everything from marital relations to agriculture, is written as a flowing rabbinic discourse. Though the terms are archaic, many say the Talmud contains founding principles that can still be applied today. But its condensed and obscure style made it largely incomprehensible to all but serious scholars.

By adding vowel markings and punctuation to the ancient text, a modern Hebrew translation that fills in gaps, and contemporary interpretations, the Steinsaltz edition aims to make the Talmud accessible to everyone.

Rabbi Steinsaltz, a diminutive man with straggly hair and an unruly white beard tinged yellow after decades of smoking a pipe, is widely considered one of the most brilliant Jewish scholars of his age.

He was born into what he described as a “not especially religious home”; his father was a Zionist socialist who volunteered in the international brigades in Spain. The rabbi says his religious belief developed gradually in his teens.

“By nature I am a skeptical person, and people with a lot of skepticism start to question atheism,” he said.

His father sent him to a Talmud tutor at the age of 10 so that he would not grow up an “ignoramus.” Later, in college, he specialized in mathematics and physics. As a result, the rabbi has an unusual ability to move easily between different worlds — secular and sacred, scientific and spiritual, earthly and divine.

Though born sickly, Rabbi Steinsaltz has long compensated for the limitations of the human condition with intellectual and metaphysical flights. Among his most popular works is “The Thirteen Petalled Rose,” a journey into Jewish mysticism that he described as “a book for the soul.”

Asking questions, he said, is both the secret of science and the essence of the Talmud, the dialectic forming the character of the Jewish people.

He leads Shefa, an umbrella organization for all his activities and educational institutions, including schools, seminaries and less formal centers of learning for men and women. Rabbi Even Yisrael is the executive director of Shefa, which has a United States affiliate, the Aleph Society.

Known as a sharp social critic, Rabbi Steinsaltz seems to have lost none of his bite. He has little patience for vanity or pretense, and says he admires the unsparing honesty and curiosity of small children, finding them more inspiring than some adult members of the species.

He is also fond of animals and spent time at the zoo, where he says he discovered how a peacock looks “undressed.”

“A peacock without feathers is like a very unappealing, big chicken,” he said, adding, “There are a lot of people like that.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/world/middleeast/19israel.html?hpw

http://www.steinsaltz.org/Biography.php

P.S. I would say out of close observation that besides the peacock, Rabbi Steinsaltz observes, I got my own duck, mazeltov.....

Marguerita Bornstein, a descendant of the rabbinical dynasty of Akiva Eger,from Toledo,in Spain .

Observatory:We can’t leave nature alone. We are a part of it, as much as any other animal.

drawing by marguerita
....we may actually face the kind of dilemma I called attention to in my article, in which there is a conflict between the value of preserving existing species and the value of preventing suffering and early death for an enormously large number of animals.

“Leave nature alone; the course of events in the natural world will go better without human intervention.”

In fact we can’t leave nature alone.

We are a part of it, as much as any other animal. More importantly, we can’t help but have a massive and pervasive impact on the natural world given our own numbers. Agricultural practices necessary for our survival constitute a continuing invasion and occupation of lands previously inhabited by others.

One explicit suggestion of my article was that it would be better to try to control our impact on the natural world in a purposeful way, guided by intelligence and moral values, including the value of diminishing suffering, rather than to continue to allow our effects on the natural world, including the extinction of species, to be determined by blind inadvertence — as, for example, in the case of the many extinctions of animal species that will be caused by global climate change.

2. Should human beings be the first to go?

3. What about the suffering of plants?

4. What about bacteria, viruses, and insects?

JEFF MCMAHAN is professor of philosophy at Rutgers University and a visiting research collaborator at the Center for Human Values at Princeton University. He is the author of many works on ethics and political philosophy, including “The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life” and “Killing in War.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/predators-a-response/

PS: Apropos

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/world/asia/12silk.html

A reminder The Hormones by Marguerita A View from Inside

Of Sonnets,Life, Liberty,Pursuit of Hapiness,Dollars and Drop, What the Heck,Who Needs Love????

drawing by marguerita

XLII

Beloved, thou hast brought me
many flowers
Plucked in the garden. all the
summer through
And winter, and it seemed as if
they grew
In this close room, nor missed the
sun and showers,
So, in the like name of that love of
ours,
Take back these thoughts, which
here unfolded too,
And which on cold and warm days
I withdrew
From my heart's ground. Indeed,
those beds and bowers
Be overgrown with bitter weeds and
rue,
And wait thy weeding: yet here's
eglantine,
Here's ivy! _ take them, as I used to
do
Thy flowers, and keep them, where
they shall not pine;
Instruct thine eyes to keep their
colours true,
And tell thy soul, their roots are
left in mine.

Passion for Living: Eu So Quero um Xodó

drawing/photos/collage by marguerita..... portraits in blue

Gilberto Gil

Composição: Anastácia / Dominguinhos

Que falta eu sinto de um bem
Que falta me faz um xodó
Mas como eu não tenho ninguém
Eu levo a vida assim tão só...

Eu só quero um amor
Que acabe o meu sofrer
Um xodó prá mim
Do meu jeito assim
Que alegre o meu viver...

Preachers stood atop boxes and gave impromptu sermons, reassuring their listeners in the dark: “It seems like the Good Lord is hiding, but he’s here. He’s always here.”http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/opinion/14bhatia.html?ref=globalhttp://www.lemonde.fr/ameriques/video/2010/01/14/dans-la-rue-des-haitiens-desempares_1291899_3222.html#ens_id=1290927

Obama:I Dollar,Therefore I Exist ,d'apres Descartes

drawing/collage by marguerita

“We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: we will not eradicate violent conflicts in our lifetimes,” Mr. Obama said, addressing the paradox of receiving an award for peace as commander in chief of a nation that is escalating the war in Afghanistan as it continues to fight in Iraq."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/world/europe/11prexy.html?pagewanted=2&_r=

1&ref=global-home

"I Think, therefore I exist"- Rene Descartes

Descartes was a geometrician. He found only in mathematics and geometry the certainty that he required. Therefore, he used the methods of geometry to think about the world. Now, in geometry, one begins with a search for axioms, simple undeniable truths – for example, the axiom that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. On the foundations of such “self-evident” propositions, whole geometrical systems can be built.

Following his geometrical model, Descartes proceeds to doubt everything – de onmibus dubitandum. He will suspend belief in the knowledge he learned from childhood, all those things “which I allowed myself in youth to be persuaded without having inquired into their truth.” Doubt will be his method, a deliberate strategy for proceeding toward certainty. (Descartes is a doubter not by nature, but by necessity. What he really wants is secure understanding so he can stop doubting.)

Descartes finds that he has no trouble doubting the existence of real objects/events – our senses too easily deceive us. And we can doubt the existence of a supernatural realm of reality – figments and fantasies are too often conjured by our native imaginations. But now his geometrical model pays off: in trying to doubt everything, he discovers something that he can’t doubt. What he can’t doubt is that he is doubting. Obviously, I exist if I doubt that I exist. My doubt that I exist proves that I exist, for I have to exist to be able to doubt. Therefore I can’t doubt that I exist. Hence, there is at least one fact in the universe that is beyond doubt. “I am, I exist is necessarily true each time that I pronounce it, or that I mentally conceive it.

Descartes thus becomes the author of the most famous phrase in Western philosophy: Cognito ergo sum, or, in his original French, Je pense, donc je suis. – I think, therefore I exist. With roots in St. Augustine, this is certainly one of the catchiest ideas yet created by the human mind.www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/781932/posts

http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/philosophers/descartes.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/René_Descartes

Marc Jacobs -Two Thousand and Ten Nights

 drawing by marguerita

This one did. “I had fun,” Mr. Jacobs said 

Afterward, shrugging, as if it were that simple. Pulling off the combination of Eastern and Western styles — European and Asian — took some finesse. (In the end, it all blended together.) The layers and proportions were tricky; almost every outfit consisted of layers, usually with sheer, hosiery-like leggings as the main underpinning. And there were ruffles and frills everywhere: coating slim dresses, spilling over tailored pinstriped jackets, spiraling around long jersey dresses, finishing rompers. But the overall effect of this terrific presentation was a free-spirited attack of fashion, a wide comfort zone with different textures and assumptions about what is pretty and feminine. http://runway.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/marc-jacobs-now-man/?ref=fashion

Smile:Youll find that life is still worthwhile

drawing by marguerita

 from title sequence of O REBU

Words by john turner and geoffrey parsons and music by charlie chaplin

Smile though your heart is aching
Smile even though its breaking
When there are clouds in the sky, youll get by
If you smile through your fear and sorrow
Smile and maybe tomorrow
Youll see the sun come shining through for you

Light up your face with gladness
Hide every trace of sadness
Although a tear may be ever so near
Thats the time you must keep on trying
Smile, whats the use of crying? 
Youll find that life is still worthwhile
If you just smile



Thats the time you must keep on trying
Smile, whats the use of crying? 
Youll find that life is still worthwhile
If you just smile

Pensamentos Noturnos 9 1/4

wire sculpture

                      by marguerita

and photo

And then looking beyond them,I could see a crowd 

along the bank of a great river;

at which I said:

"Allow me now to know

who are these people -master- and what law

has made them so eager for the crossing,

as I can see despite the feeble light".

E poi ch'a riguardar oltre mi diedi,

vidi genti a la riva d'un gran fiume;

per ch'io dissi: Maestro, or mi concedi

ch,i' sappia quali sono, e qual costume

le fa di repassar parer si pronte,

com'i' discerno per lo fioco lume."

from Canto III 25

The Divine Comedy

Of Dante Alighieri

INFERNO

Pensamentos Noturnos 8

drawing by marguerita        Climb every mountain,

Search high and low, Follow every byway, Every path you know.  Climb every mountain, Ford every stream, Follow every rainbow, 'Till you find your dream.  A dream that will need All the love you can give, Every day of your life  For as long as you live.  Climb every mountain, Ford every stream, Follow every rainbow, Till you find your dream  A dream that will need  All the love you can give, Every day of your life, For as long as you live.  Climb every mountain, Ford every stream,  Follow every rainbow, Till you find your dream.

lyrics from The Sound of Music

Pensamentos Noturnos 7

drawing by marguerita                               Play with me

Pensamentos Noturnos 5

drawing by marguerita

Pensamentos Noturnos 4

drawing by marguerita

Pensamentos Noturnos 3

drawing by marguerita

Pensamentos Noturnos 2

dddrawing by marguerita

Pensamentos Noturnos

drawing by marguerita