Sunset, tonight.

On Picnic Point.

On my back in the front yard, I look up and see the robins have built a nest...

... in the oak tree:



I wouldn't have been lying there to notice that if you hadn't made the lawn so plush and lagged behind when it was 6 p.m. and finally cool enough to leave the homestead. Then we set out. Into the woods:



Ah! The wild asparagus!

"The subject of pain is the business I am in. To give meaning and shape to frustration and suffering."

"The existence of pain cannot be denied. I propose no remedies or excuses."

Said the grand sculptor Louise Bourgeois, who, at 98, has arrived at last at that remedy for pain which no one ever needed to propose.

At the age of 20, she studied math: "I got peace of mind... only through the study of rules nobody could change."

She moved on to art:

"I have a religious temperament," Ms. Bourgeois, a professed atheist, said about the emotional and spiritual energy that she poured into her work. "I have not been educated to use it. I’m afraid of power. It makes me nervous. In real life, I identify with the victim. That’s why I went into art."

"If Google told you to jump off a cliff, would you do it?"

For some the answer is: Yes, I would and then I'd sue.

***

Bonus lawsuit story that I wouldn't have blogged if I hadn't run across that other one:

Upper West Side couples counselor Jeffrey Mechanic is being sued [for $4 million] by two of his former clients who say he nearly destroyed their marriage in his wacky attempts to save it....

"He would tell me constantly that my wife was not capable of satisfying me... For 10 years, I was faithful. Then I just caved in and had an affair, and [Mechanic] said there was nothing wrong with that"....

Aren't marriage counselors always dealing death blows to marriages? That's my observation. But this couple actually stayed together, so... seems the husband got good mileage out of Mechanic when he used him as an excuse for cheating.

"I would like [blank] to become more self-aware."

Who would you like to become more self-aware?
	Hanna Rosin
	Hanna Rosin's cat
	Maureen Tkacik
	Sarah Palin
pollcode.com free polls

Memorial Day.

(Enlarge.)

From "her inwardness is violated" to: she "is like a raped interiority."

Virginia Postrel, noting the "needlessly ugly and opaque the prose" of academics, quotes Francine du Plessix Gray's review of the new translation of Simone de Beauvoir's "Second Sex":

Writing about the aggressive nature of man’s penetration of woman, [earlier translator] Parshley felicitously translates a Beauvoir phrase as “her inwardness is violated.” In contrast, [new translators] Borde and Malovany- Chevallier’s rendering states that woman “is like a raped interiority.” And where Parshley has Beauvoir saying of woman, “It is she who defines herself by dealing with nature on her own account in her emotional life,” the new translators substitute, “It is she who defines herself by reclaiming nature for herself in her affectivity.” In yet another example, man’s approach to woman’s “dangerous magic” is seen this way in Parshley: “He sets her up as the essential, it is he who poses her as such and thus he really acts as the essential in this voluntary alienation.” But in Borde and Malovany-Chevallier, “it is he who posits her, and he who realizes himself thereby as the essential in this alienation he grants.” Throughout, there are truly inexcusable passages in which the translators even lack a proper sense of English syntax: “Moments women consider revelations are those where they discover they are in harmony with a reality based on peace with one’s self.”

You may wonder who will read writing like that, but the book will be assigned in courses... that you'd probably be wise not to take. So the good news is: repellent writing is a good thing. Like evil-tasting poison.

Sunday's talking heads.

Crack Skull Bob wields his swift pen:

"Having these all on the same list is kind of like saying, 'You know what my pet peeves are? People who crack their knuckles, genocide, extreme poverty, and shopping cart wheels that get stuck.'..."

"... I mean, OK, but the juxtaposition is a little insensitive."

Jac is offended by TIME's list of the 50 worst inventions.

"That's why we moan and bitch and bellyache."

"Because by doing so we hope in our next incarnation, life will, in all senses of the term, be cool."

"And [Peggy Noonan], Ann Althouse, and Megan McArdle will have to deal with it for the rest of their lives."

"Those three women have all been an intellectual blessing to public discourse in this country, but they all succombed [sic] to the same cult of personality two years ago, and we still do not know what the final price tag on that cult of personality is going to be."

Note to Little Miss Attila. Not everyone who voted for Obama voted for him for the simple stereotypical reason you keep in your head. If you want to know why I actually voted for Obama, read "How McCain Lost Me." The bottom line was:

1. [McCain] did not understand economics, the most important issue.

2. He lost the ability to make the experience argument [when he picked Sarah Palin for VP].

3. He never defined himself as a principled conservative.

4. Erratic and incoherent, he lacked sufficient mental capacity.

I'm not happy with the job Obama is doing, but it could be a lot worse, and what McCain would have done is something we will never get to see. I won't accuse you of succumbing to a cult of personality if you are imagining some wonderful McCain presidency that would have been, but you can't compare that what never happened to what is happening now.

In the end, we were stuck choosing between 2 far from perfect men, and I voted for Obama without being caught up in any sort of giddy emotionalism.

Oh!

Guerrilla gardeners.

"They garden in public places with, and sometimes without, permission. Without permission, it could just be 'John,' the Williamson Street neighborhood’s 'guerrilla gardener,' planting sunflower seeds along the bicycle path or filling that tree-line gap with a plan-appropriate sapling. It could be Keedo Beebe, a shy, scarfed woman who has methodically established a tangled hosta and wildflower greenway, without official permission, along a hidden Yahara River path.... 'Why not? I like to go out and plant things, it’s what my mom and I liked to do.'"

Is this good?
	Yes! I love these impish citizens with their free thinking and free work.
	Yes! Gardens are good and more is more.
	No! There needs to be some knowledge and order to the installation of plants.
	No! Even people who believe they are good need to follow the rules.
pollcode.com free polls

"Too often it feels as though Barry is watching from a balcony, reluctant to enter the fray until the clamor of the crowd forces him to come down."

"The pattern is perverse. The man whose presidency is rooted in his ability to inspire withholds that inspiration when it is most needed."

Was it his ability?  Or were we the ones that had the ability — the ability to see him as able when he was up there on the campaign platform mouthing abstractions? He's still up there — on what Maureen Dowd calls "a balcony" — but now all the concrete problems of the world are his responsibility. He hasn't changed. He hasn't stopped doing something he was able to do before. But we have reached the end of our capacity to idealize him. We don't like him up there, looking down, where things are going so wrong. We are withholding our trust. But rightly so! This ability to trust is not a very impressive ability. Let's be critical. Being critical, we have no reason to talk about whether the President is adequately soothing us.

At the Iris Café...

... there's an edge of violet.