New Year's Eve quotations

“And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been, full of work that has never been done, full of tasks, claims, and demands; and let us see that we learn to take it without letting fall too much of what it has to bestow upon those who demand of it necessary, serious, and great things.”
Rainer Maria Rilke in a letter

"It is far better to be alone than to be in bad company." George Washington. I wish we had hanged him but he was right about this.

The world is in great danger, from America

 

I keep meaning to print and paste absurd and or terrifying headlines in the Daily Telegraph. 

There are so many. 

This one reminds us that the world is in very great danger - from Americans (and from Benyamin Netanyahu who wants the Americans to go to war with Iran as he urged them to go to war with Iraq, Syria and Libya). 

Bolton is an outlier being plainly mad but people like him (think John McCain) are part of the secret network that rules the West to which the Labour leader and probably next British PM Starmer is fully signed up. People in the British Labour party who express sympathy with the people of Gaza are in danger of being expelled from the party.

Quotations

"God is an infinite sphere, the centre of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere.” 

Hermes Trismegistus, “thrice-great Hermes”, Book of the 24 Philosophers. Pascal and Voltaire also said it and it has been attributed to St Augustine.

"In the sphere I am everywhere the centre, as she, the circumference, is nowhere found. Yet she shall be known and I never." 

Aleister Crowley, the Satanist 

"The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce variety and uncompromising divergences of men. In a large community, we can choose our companions. In a small community, our companions are chosen for us."

G. K. Chesterton 

“Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. (I refer to it by this name because I once
discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have.)


"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article
on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the
article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues.
Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.


"In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page,
and forget what you know.


"That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I'd point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all. But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper.”

Michael Crichton

Cardinal Zen of Hong Kong is a brave opponent of Chinese Communism and was ignored by the Pope when he visited Rome. Summorum Pontificum is an apostolic letter of Pope Benedict XVI encouraging the traditional Latin Mass to be said where the laity request it, without the permission of a bishop.

Aruba

"In the afternoon they came unto a land

In which it seeméd always afternoon."   

I expected Aruba to be much less interesting than Ramsgate, which does at least have a Pugin monastery, but in fact a sense of utter relaxation immediately descended on me.

A glimpse of Cartagena and Panama City

Before the pandemic I had intended to spend two weeks in Colombia, which would not have been nearly enough. Instead I just spent one week there and want to return soon. 

Bogota is wonderful and not spoilt by tourism. 

Bogota

I have no idea why I am going on a Caribbean cruise and before that to Colombia, and it doesn't matter, but I am.

I probably supposed that Colombia the most interesting place in the Americas apart from Cuba, which I have already visited.

Bogota cathedral shortly after I arrived.






Acute sleep deprivation but I love my groovy hotel, the Selina Candelaria. I decided to avoid expensive hotels which are boring and stay in hotels that are also hostels,  where you make friends without trying, as I did.




In Colombia everyone lights a candle on the Eve of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Mine is the one on the far left of the box.





In any case I am so glad I chose Colombia. I love her.


How can a country so close to the USA be so un-American, so traditional, so conservative? Whichever Mexican politician said 'Poor Mexico, so far from heaven so close to the United States' could have been speaking about Colombia too.  

Tragicomedy

Talking about someone's problems a moment ago, I used a quotation I once loved but which I have not remembered since my teens. 'This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.'

Horace Walpole said it, as far as I ever knew, though it sounds too good for him. The internet says Racine, whom I do not think of as a wit.

Every life is at both comic and tragic. I said this to someone who asked me what I meant and I decided he was not a deep thinker.