Hide not thy tears on this last day
Your sorrow has no shame;
To march no more midst lines of gray;
No longer play the game.
Four years have passed in joyful ways — Wouldst stay those old times dear?
Then cherish now these fleeting days,
The few while you are here.
Everywhere you go there is an emphasis on the outdoors. Nature is what we must be in touch with, and the stronger the connection we have with Nature, the better we are supposed to feel. That not so concise aphorism is commonplace in society. An effort to strengthen such a connection to the outdoors, however, could over step its bounds and infringe on the patient’s well being.
The courtyard adjacent to the cafeteria is surrounded on three sides by concrete. The fourth side consists of glass doors, which mysteriously defy opening, that lead into the cafeteria. The sky is not visible from most vantage points around the glass enclosure. A sense of distance, rather than closeness, is felt, which presumably is the opposite of what was intended. Although theoretically accessible, the courtyard remains more of an eschatological endgame, an enigmatic appendage, more of a grammatically unsound or otherwise misplaced meme. The courtyard, in this way, is an exercise in poor planning.
Despite its troubles, it is clear that the courtyard was conceived under acceptable pretenses. It successfully corrals light from the beautiful Pennsylvanian countryside into an otherwise dreary dining hall that dates from the architecturally unpopular 1960s. Trees and shrubs are aligned attractively around a concrete pool that, although lacking in any true inspiration, does let mingle the more appealing elements of the outdoors. An illusion of proximity is key in many of these establishments, as if saying, “In spite of the evidence to the contrary, you are not trapped in a concrete cage, but rather reveling in the beauty of sun, wind, and water. Rejoice!”
Around this festivity ring solid, never-ending concrete walls, which evoke a dictatorial aura. The link to the outdoors needs to encourage emotional relief and relaxation, not prisonlike nervousness or existential distress. Florence Nightingale attributes deficiencies in the efficacy of a hospital to a lack of space, ventilation, and light. Nightingale’s famed “Notes on Hospitals” clearly finds expression in the courtyard and surrounding structures, yet something is missing. And that, dear friends, is an aesthetic pleasing in nature.
What may be seen as a sort of luxury is in fact absolutely vital to the wellbeing of the public. A harmonious design can be restorative to the mind and, through the mind, revitalizing to the body. The courtyard space needs to be rethought. One solution would be to absorb it into the dining hall, providing an interactive space that would keep its trees and water but in an indoor solarium. This would place Nature directly at our caged fingertips and solve many of the problems raised.
He [Sean Carroll] explains how, at a subatomic or quantum level, it is far from obvious why the arrow of time should point the way it does, for the laws of physics stipulate that particle interactions are reversible. In the quantum world, time might as well run backward as forward. Imagine a film clip of two billiard balls moving at a steady pace, colliding and bouncing off each other. How can you be sure that the film was not shown to you in reverse—that what you actually saw was time running backward? So Mr. Carroll persists: "Why then, in the observable universe, does time appear to run in one direction only? Why, for instance, when an egg is broken and scrambled into an omelette, if the quantum processes that allowed this to happen are reversible, why does the omelette never reassemble itself into an egg?"
I must retire now to the sandbox,
to make cloud castles of sand
to steel them with lettered might
while seated squarely in this box;
prolix castles too vast, too sandy
to stand and bear their weight.
They cannot escape
the lashing waves of one life.
I must retire now, dear friend,
for castles are crumbling
fine dust to the incessant wind.
In the morning light, sand layered
on sand, and later, without notice or care,
decay undoes what builds the mind
its rotting hands sculpt and boil
the castle immensity to grain.
I'm sorry, dear friend, for I must retire
and tend the castles towering
beyond the overhead bulbs
that bleach the eyes white.
I can't see you any more, dear friend,
for the castles need tending,
and the lashing waves
lick and dissolve my words.
Again from the wonderful Letters of Note, a Christmas note:
Transcript
Question:
Dear Editor,
I am eight years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says "If you see it in the Sun it's so." Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?
Virginia O'Hanlon.
115 W.95th St
VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
No Santa Claus! Thank GOD! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
Retrospective diagnostic strategy employing linguistic analysis of works by the champion of murder-mysteries, from the Times:
"Did Agatha Christie, who wrote several dozen mystery novels during her 53-year career, suffer from Alzheimer's-related dementia? Though some of her biographers have suspected as much, actual evidence was advanced in March by a research team led by Ian Lancashire and Graeme Hirst, professors at the University of Toronto, in a paper called 'Vocabulary Changes in Agatha Christie's Mysteries as an Indication of Dementia.'"
Taken from Letters of Note, a note on Tesla:
In the summer of 1899, whilst alone in his Colorado Springs laboratory working with his magnifying transmitter, the inimitable Nikola Tesla observed a series of unusual rhythmic signals which he described as 'counting codes'. Having just detected cosmic radio signals for the first time, Tesla immediately believed them to be attempted communications from an intelligent life-form on either Venus or Mars, and later said of the experience, 'The feeling is constantly growing on me that I had been the first to hear the greeting of one planet to another'.
The next year, Tesla was asked by the Red Cross to predict man's greatest possible achievement over the next century. The letter below was his reply.
Read on for the transcript...
Most of the time we run across arguments against vaccination, there is a tendency to dismiss. Yet to successfully counter the 0ff-the-cuff citation of vaccinations gone wrong necessitates a solid retort both logical and pragmatic. Here's the intro of an article, in Le Monde, that gives it a go...
"L'obstacle à la vaccination est que, du point de vue rationnel, il ne faut pas se faire vacciner : pourquoi prendre le risque de complications qui peuvent être graves pour éviter une maladie en général bénigne ? On comprend que les foules ne se soient pas précipitées dans les centres de vaccination mis en place par les autorités. Les appels au civisme, à la responsabilité, à la solidarité restent lettre morte quand on voit que s'abstenir de courir un risque est parfaitement raisonnable..."
An article, "Who killed John Keats?" in the Times Literary Supplement reads "A letter by Keats's old friend makes clear how much 'sensative-bitterness' the poet felt after attacks on him by critics."
And now the letter, published Friday July 27, 1821, five months after Keats’s death, in the Morning Chronicle:
JOHN KEATS, THE POET.
To the EDITOR of the MORNING CHRONICLE.
Sir, I find by the Daily Papers, that the young Poet, John Keats, is dead. I shall feel gratified if you will allow a few remarks from his School-fellow and Friend, a place in your Paper.
It appears that Mr. Keats died of decline at Rome, whither he had retired to repair the inroads which the rupturing of a blood vessel had made upon his constitution.
It is not impossible that his premature death may have been brought on by his performing the office of nurse to a younger brother, who also died of decline; for his attention to the invalid was so anxious and unwearied, that his friends could see distinctly that his own health had suffered in the exertion. This may have been one cause, but I do not believe it was the sole cause. It will be remembered that Keats received some rough and brutal usage from the Reviews about two years since; particularly from the Quarterly, and from a Northern one; which, in the opinion of every gentlemanly and feeling mind, has rendered itself infamous from its coarse pandarism to the depraved appetites of gossips and scandal-mongers. To what extent the treatment he received from those writers operated upon his mind I cannot say; for Keats had a noble – a proud – and an undaunted heart; but he was very young, only one and twenty. He had all the enthusiasm of the youthful poet burning in him – he thought to take the great world by the hand, and hold its attention while he unburthened the overflowings of an aspiring and ardent imagination; and his beautiful recasting of “The Pot of Basil” proves that he would have done so had he lived. But his ardour was met by the torpedo touch of one whose “Blood is very snow-broth;” and the exuberant fancies of a young and almost ungovernable fancy were dragged forward by another, and exhibited in gross and wanton caricature. It is truly painful to see the yearnings of an eager and trusting mind thus held up to the fiend-like laugh of a brutal mob, upon the pikes and bayonets of literary mercenaries. If it will be any gratification to Mr. Gifford to know how much he contributed to the discomfort of a generous mind, I can so far satisfy it by informing him, that Keats has lain awake through the whole night talking with sensative-bitterness of the unfair treatment he had experienced; and with becoming scorn of the information which was afterwards suggested to him; “That as it was considered he had been rather roughly handled, his future productions should be reviewed with less harshness.” So much for the integrity and impartiality of criticism! This charge would no doubt be denied with high and flouncing indignation; but he told me he had been given to understand as much, and I believe him. If the object of this hint was to induce the young Poet to quit the society of those whom he had chosen for his friends, and who had helped him in pushing off his boat from shore, it shows how little his character was known to his assailants. He had a “little body,” but he too had a “mighty heart,” as any one of them would have discovered, had the same impertinences been offered to him personally which were put forth in their anonymous scandal-rolls. Keats’s great crime was his having dedicated his first production to Mr. Leigh Hunt. He should have cowered under the wings of Mr. Croker, and he would have been fostered into “a pretty chicken.”
I remember his first introduction to Mr. Hunt, and the pleasure each seemed to derive from the interview. I remember with admiration, all that Gentleman’s friendship and disinterestedness towards him – disinterestedness, which would surprise those only who do not know him. I remember too, his first introduction to Mr. Haydon; and when in the course of conversation that great artist asked him, “if he did not love his country,” how the blood rushed to his cheeks and the tears to his eyes, at his energetic reply. His love of freedom was ardent and grand. He once said, that if he should live a few years, he would go over to South America, and write a Poem on Liberty, and now he lies in a land where liberty once flourished, and where it is regenerating.
I hope his friends and admirers (for he had both, and warm ones) will raise a monument to his memory on the classical spot where he died; and that Canova, the Roman, will contribute that respect, so amply in his power, to the memory of the young Englishman, who possessed a kindred mind with, and who restamped the loveliest of all the stories of his great countryman, – Boccaccio.
And now farewel, noble spirit! You have forsaken us, and taken the long and dark journey towards “that bourne from whence no traveller returns;” but you have left a memorial of your genius which “posterity will not willingly let die.” You have plunged into the gulf, but your golden sandals remain. The storm of life has overblown, and, “the rest is silence.”
“Fear no more the heat of the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages.
* * * * * *
Quiet consummation have,
And renowned be thy Grave.”
Y.
