Today, wars all around and other natural disasters, the « economy » in tatters, hunger, disease, plastic surgery rampant. And in my weekly agenda, dotted with quotes from artists through the ages, there is this:
« Il réalisait parmi les hommes cette figure parfaite que le cercle réalise parmi les lignes géométriques. C’était un zéro. »
Victor Hugo, note destinée aux Misérables.
(« He accomplished among men that perfect form that the circle accomplishes among geometric lines. He was a zero. »)
Well. My day will never be the same.
Enseignante Zen et poète, Sensei Amy “Tu es cela” Hollowell est née et a grandi à Minneapolis, aux Etats-Unis. Arrivée en France en 1981 pour étudier la littérature et l’histoire, elle y est restée, s’installant à Paris, où elle élève ses deux enfants et gagne sa vie en tant que journaliste.
The Zen teacher and poet Amy “Tu es cela” Hollowell Sensei was born and raised in Minneapolis, but came to France in 1981 to study literature and history and has lived in Paris ever since, raising her two children and making a living as a journalist.
“… an amiable, elderly man who still wore Gladstone collars… He had never done anything –not even anything wrong. He was not fast; he was not even particularly rich. He was simply in the thing; and there was an end of it.”
G. K. Chesterton, “The Queer Feet” [Father Brown Stories]
I’ve read this some weeks ago. Chesterton is an author with whom I always feel uncomfortable. Human, visionary, humanist, reactionary, anarchist… Liberal and conservative at the same time. He’s the king of paradoxes, and may be himself a paradox (or just another fruitcake, who knows?). I never quite know how to deal with what he writes.