Good Morning

I'm With Calvin On This

Thursday Thoughts

Well, it started as a sunny morning but has now clouded over. It is so far a dry and mild day - around 12C at the moment.

I have been doing some reading and then listening to some vocal jazz followed by a Wire mag Winner form 1882. Rudolf Serkin's recording of twp major Beethoven Piano Sonatas, the 8th in C minor "Pathetique" and No.29 in B-flat major "Hammerklavier". Probably the best version of these two outstanding sonatas.



Reading more books this coming month of February about Paris and the art and culture of that place in the 20th century.




Well, that keep me busy for a while.

Clara

No, nothing to do with Clara Oswald of Doctor Who fandom. This is a 2018 Canadian-British film that is best described as a high concept science fiction drama.




The film stars husband and wife actors Patrick J. Adams and Troian Bellisario, playing astrophysicist Isaac and itinerant artist Clara, who become close while searching for signs of intelligent life in the universe.

To summarize - Clara's main themes, which are "life's big questions": the nature of existence, human purpose, and "our need to connect with others." The film asks us to consider the infinite, "but not before looking inward."

"Are we alone?": existential longing
Clara is most simply described as a story about "space and love": space, in the sense of "this search for life among the stars" (the title itself was chosen because it means "clear" and "bright," like a star), and love as it relates to bereavement and loss.
"We are not alone": science and spirituality
The director, Akash Sherman, approaches the idea of life beyond Earth from both a scientific perspective from "a place of spirituality" in thinking that "there might be something out there... we're not alone", and, in an interview, he references Neil deGrasse Tyson looking up at the sky and "feeling a type of connectivity that's almost spiritual."

A truly awe-inspiring movie in my estimation.

Poem Of The Week

Frost at Midnight

BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,

Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.

But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger ! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger's face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!

Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the intersperséd vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the night-thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.