"...The audience he craves he also hates. 'Such men as Kane always tend toward the newspaper and entertainment world,' Welles said. 'They combine a morbid preoccupation with the public with a devastatingly low opinion of the public mentality and moral character.' Nothing could be more natural that a man like that would attempt to dictate his place in history. And nothing could be more availing. History is the shadow cast by the dead. So long as there's light, the shadow will fall." Jill Lepore, The New Yorker, 1-20-14

A Word Today

Maunder. "1. To talk incoherently or aimlessly. 2. To move or act aimlessly or vaguely; wander." This word cuts two ways today. Applied to the discontented materialist, it is dim. Applied to the open-minded explorer, there is a brightness. To the perpetually distracted and fearful, there is confusion.

A Spain Moment

In one of the last tapas places we tried, in Ronda, in town, before going to the train station to return to Madrid, they played loud, old, Michael Jackson. And the tapas were very fussy, modernist, minimal, and expensive. Yeah, they were good, but so were many other less pretentious tapas experiences over the past two weeks. We perched on the tall stools and endured it before paying and walking outside to pull our rollers to the station.

Road Kill

I want to see things as they are / without me. Why, I don’t know. / As a kid I always looked / at roadkill close up, and poked / a stick into it. I want to look at death / with eyes like my own baby eyes, / not yet blinded by knowledge. / I told this to my friend the monk, / And he said, Want, want, want. - Chase Twichell