Tag Archives: Paris
Paying Nostalgia Forward
Paying Nostalgia Forward Jerry and I celebrated our eighteenth wedding anniversary last Friday. We watched the inauguration (moving right along here), and then drove through the rain to a Hindu temple in New Jersey that the wonderful lady who runs … Continue reading
Posted in academe, action, anthropology, art, art of living, autonomy, beauty, childhood, chivalry, cities, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, courtship, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, eternity, faith, femininity, feminism, freedom, friendship, gender balance, health, heroes, hidden God, history, idealism, ideality, identity, institutional power, literature, love, masculinity, memoir, memory, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, mortality, motherhood, mysticism, ontology, past and future, peace, philosophy, poetry, politics, power, presence, promissory notes, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, relationships, religion, roles, romance, romantic love, romanticism, seduction, self-deception, sex appeal, sexuality, social conventions, social ranking, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, spirituality, status, status of women, suffering, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, the profane, the sacred, theism, theology, time, twentieth century, twenty-first century, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged a good marriage, being a good couple, being understood, childhood, courage, courtship, cutting the umbilical cord, cyclical time, defining desires, desire, Eastern art, emotional health, falling in love, filial piety, first love, French restaurant, growing up, Hindu temple, homesickness, Indian aesthetic, integrality, lasting desires, life frontiers, life story, linear time, longing, Madison Avenue, Manhattan apartment, marble sculpture, Marriage, maturity, new projects, New York City, New Yorkers, non-historical v historical, nostalgia, opposites attract, overcoming tyrannies, parents, Paris, partnership, personal identity, private space, professional identity, publishing articles, recovery, refusing to grow up, renewal, repairing wounds, repression, Romantic Love, romantic risks, sculpture in high relief, secrets of the future, secrets of the past, seeing significance, self-recovery, self-renewal, self-repair, shared space, suitable life partner, Texans, Texas panhandle, the big picture, the future, the large scheme, the past, the present, true love, uncured wounds, unworthy suitors, Washington DC, wedding anniversary, Western art, wholeness
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“Places”
“Places” “There are no places anymore.” This was the complaint we two hitchhikers, Anna and me, heard from an American traveler at a roadside stop. Our informant — who was saying this to his two compatriots many decades back — … Continue reading
Posted in action, alienation, art, cities, class, cool, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, fashion, freedom, history, history of ideas, identity, institutional power, literature, love, memoir, nineteenth-century, psychology, relationships, roles, social conventions, suffering, the examined life, time, twentieth century, war, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged "Portrait of Jenny", "The World of Yesterday", 9/11, artists and writers, Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bateau Mouche, beats, Big Apple, bohemians, book burning, cafes, Cool, cosmopolitan, country music, earth, Europe, European cities, German Occupation, Hemingway, hitchhiking, nazis, New York, New York in the nineteen forties, Notre Dame, Paris, Robert Frost, Stefan Zweig, Stephen Vincent Benét, The Great War, the Seine, tourists/tourism, travel, World War I, World War II
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“Peace”
“Peace” Peace! Who doesn’t want it? (Well, lots of people, apparently.) More to the present point: in what ways have I shown a preference for peace, and what’s the peace story for me now? When I was sixteen, I spent … Continue reading
Posted in action, culture, desire, ethics, evil, femininity, freedom, guilt and innocence, history, history of ideas, life and death struggle, love, memoir, peace, political movements, power, psychology, relationships, roles, sexuality, social conventions, suffering, the examined life, the problematic of woman, war, work
Tagged action, adolescence, adulthood, ashram, celibacy, celibate, Cherokee reservation, compassion, conflict, cruelty, Dorothy Day, dreams, end times, farm work, Fulbright, Gandhi, gangboys, History, impure thoughts, justice, kindness, meditation, mercy, North Carolina, outhouses, pacifism, pacifist, Paris, Peace, peace love and light, Picasso, poverty, promiscuity, purity, Quakers, rabbinic midrash, Smoky Mountains, social construction of reality, summer camp, The Catholic Worker, thought creates reality, vegetarian, violence, youth
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“Learning to Ride”
“Learning to Ride” Fran, my therapeutic riding teacher, told me today that – – slow and steady – – I am putting together the different pieces of a rider’s ride. By degrees, I am getting “stabilized” in holding the position … Continue reading
Posted in culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, faith, fashion, femininity, gender balance, Hegel, history, literature, love, male power, memoir, motherhood, nineteenth-century, Phenomenology of the Mind, philosophy, power, psychology, relationships, roles, sexuality, social conventions, spirituality, suffering, the examined life, the problematic of woman, theism, time
Tagged "Conversions: A Philosophic Memoir", adolescence, affinities, American teenagers, bescherte, Brooklyn, childhood make-believe, communist, companionship, coquetry, courtship, dating, dressage, earthiness, Flirting, gender roles, Gustave Flaubert, hamish, handicap, Hegel, identity, intellect, love, lovers, man/woman game, Marriage, Paris, partnerships, primitivity, providence, role models, Romance, sentimental education, spirituality, student demonstrations, the 60s, the counterculture, therapeutic riding, Yiddish
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“Friendly Fire”
“Friendly Fire” Sartre and Merleau-Ponty were among the more influential of the twentieth-century’s French philosophers. They had been friends, but Sartre had broken with Merleau-Ponty over some political disagreement. When Merleau-Ponty died in mid-life, prematurely, Sartre felt free to write … Continue reading
Posted in culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, femininity, feminism, friendship, Hegel, literature, memoir, Phenomenology of the Mind, philosophy, political, relationships, the problematic of woman
Tagged better angels, café, eulogies, female friendship, first love, fjords, French philosophers, friends, good and evil, heart of darkness, Hegel, Joseph Conrad, Merleau-Ponty, moral choice, morality, Nietzsche, Nordic women, Paris, political disagreement, quarrels, Sartre, sin, unresolved relations, wicked mother
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“Sex Appeal”
“Sex Appeal” Is it a good thing? A subversive thing? A morally neutral thing? Some years ago, I felt the need of fresh light on my situation. Since modern life’s more approved diagnostic tools and remedies seemed to me shopworn … Continue reading
Posted in culture, desire, erotic life, femininity, feminism, philosophy, relationships, sexuality, social conventions, spirituality, the problematic of woman
Tagged astrology, being desired, charm, desire, erotic influences, erotic wisdom., European women, fair play, Frenchmen, G. W. F. Hegel's Reason in History, Gandhi, manipulativeness, Mata Hari, Paris, passion, reciprocity, sex appeal, sex energy, sexy, subterfuge, tattoos, the Evil Impulse, the rabbis, therapy
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“Fun”
“Fun” Whenever I really had fun, I hadn’t sought it and never called it that. What times am I thinking of? There was the time a select group of us young colleagues, who were fired for resisting the powers that … Continue reading
Posted in academe, culture, friendship, literature, philosophy, political, psychology, relationships, social conventions
Tagged academe, adolescence, artifice, awkward, childhood, colleagues, constraint, contrived, freedom, friendship, fun, Greek myth, high-school, horses, Les Halles, Marcel Proust, Paris, philosophy, Procrustes
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