Thursday, October 08, 2009

Reading good books



Originally uploaded by Andrei Singer
"The future of the world no longer disturbs me; I do not try still to calculate, with anguish, how long or how short a time the Roman peace will endure; I leave that to the Gods. Not that I have acquired more confidence in their justice, which is not our justice, or more faith in human wisdom; the contrary is true. Life is atrocious, we know. But precisely because I expect little of the human condition, man's periods of felicity, his partial progress, his efforts to begin over again and to continue, all seem to me like so many prodigies which nearly compensate for monstrous mass of ills and defeats, of indifference and error. Catastrophe and ruin will come; disorder will triumph, but order will too, from time to time. Peace will again establish itself between two periods and there regain the meaning which we have tried to give them. Not all our books will perish, nor our statues, if broken, lie unrepaired; other domes and pediments will rise from our domes and pediments; some few men will think and work and feel as we have done, and I venture to count upon such continuators, placed irregularly throughout the centuries, and upon this kind of intermittent immortality."
— Marguerite Yourcenar />

Et le but d'unne vie d'homme



Originally uploaded by Andrei Singer
"Passion such as hers is all consent, asking little in return. I had merely to enter a room where she was to see her face take on that peaceful expression of one who is resting in bed. If I touched her, I had the impression that all the blood in her veins was turning to honey."
— Marguerite Yourcenar

Monday, October 05, 2009



Originally uploaded by Andrei Singer
I almost never post landscapes. It is simply not my thing. Tonight is different. A person I knew in very auspicious and positive circumstances died in very dire circumstances. He was a soldier. This was not the least apparent. He was self effacing and had the brightest of smiles. He was all hope for the world and when there was no reason for hope he was there about to create those reasons. He was a soldier in the business of saving lives. One by one, delivering clean water. And he knew exactly why he was doing what he was doing. This sense of purpose was always evident. I knew U.S. Army Capt. Benjamin Sklaver way too little. Today I hate myself for that. I have all the right excuses. He was younger then I was and a year bellow in the grad school we attended. Today a good few years later (but how few they appear now) I am married, he is just engaged ... I have maybe a few pictures of him in the midst of other grad students but these are more appropriate. Oseh shalom bim'romav hu ya'aseh shalom aleinu