Heaven is...

"Consciousness, we shall find, is reducible to relations between objects, and objects we shall find to be reducible to relations between different states of consciousness; and neither point of view is more nearly ultimate than the other."

- T.S.Eliot (Doctoral dissertation), 1916

"For a lot of guys, seducing and having sex with a woman symbolizes an exemption from process," says Barry Michels, writer's-block therapist.  “Sex is almost like magic—I’m there, I’ve made it. It’s the ultimate accomplishment, especially for a writer. They spend all their time alone. They usually have little—I mean we all do—feelings of inferiority. That’s going to cure it all in one fell swoop. We used [Reversal of Desire] not only to get him to write and face the pain of not seducing women but also to understand pain better, because one of the criticisms of his writing was that his characters weren’t deep enough. He couldn’t quite connect to their pain, because he was avoiding his own.”
From http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/03/21/110321fa_fact_goodyear#ixzz1HO1v4KNv

A pic of the boat I sailed on this winter (this was not from this week's race, but from a couple of weeks before).  I got a referral to another faster boat on Saturday, so I may be switching for summer/fall.

Blake Island

"Even the most courageous among us only rarely has the courage for that which he really knows."

- Nietzsche

Post-Empire

I had to stall that nagging little time clock that sits on my desktop and urges out productivity each day of my weekday life, in order to read this: Bret Easton Ellis's uncut essay on Charlie Sheen and the state of post-Empire public life.  The essay actually originally appeared in the Daily Beast on Monday, but on that same day Ellis tweeted (so post-Empire) that it was a highly-edited version (Empire) and the full version would be available on Wednesday.  Thank you Ellis and Twitter; this version is so much more satisfying.

Calling out Kanye West's "Runaway" as a post-Empire rallying cry; Ellis gets it.  This is exemplary of some of the reasons I suggested Kanye West as being worthy of notice in the zeitgeist of 2011; he is the embodiment of something important in our culture, whatever you may think of that something's (or West's) merit.

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Rothko.

Newman. Yes, this is my standing-next-to-important-"my-kid-could-have-painted-that"-art pose. Note strategic placement of newspaper; it makes all the difference.

A whole section of a floor in MoMA was dedicated to architecture and design; this poster advertised a series of urban-planning exhibitions in Stuttgart in the 20s. Out of that incubator arose the international-style Weisenhoff neighborhood that I visited last year in Stuttgart, which was begun in 1927.

Cafe Habana, NoLIta

The High Line, Meatpacking District and Chelsea.



Buildings by Jean Nouvel and Frank Gehry in the same frame; not a lot of places you can get that.

Death + Company lost its liquor license and had to close, so we had dinner at Caracas, also in the East Village. It required a 45 minute wait in the cold, but it was entirely worth it. The East Village must have a liquor license problem, though, because of the three places we went/tried to go tonight, two didn't have a liquor license and one had lost it. Possibly its proximity to NYU? [Update: There is actually a law in NYC (I am told) that prohibits the serving of hard alcohol on blocks with a church on them]

Yes, please.

Went to Midtown today and started with a visit to my favorite international-style modernist skyscraper, the Seagram building by Mies. Then, we had lunch with my cousin Leslie at Brasserie. After that, we hit MoMA, Central Park and shopping on Fifth Avenue.








Tonight we are doing dinner and drinks at Death + Company, in the East Village.