R.L. Swihart's Blog, page 80

Just Showing Off

Long Beach. Colorado Lagoon. Just Showing Off.

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Long Beach: Breakfast or B-Day @ Beach

 Long Beach. Breakfast or B-Day Party @ the Beach (Chilly!!!). Palos Verdes in the hazy distance.

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Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie

Hamburg, Germany (2019). Hamburg viewed from the new concert hall: Elbphilharmonie.

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Topanga: Trippet Ranch

 Santa Monica Mountains. Topanga State Park. Trippet Ranch. Hiking. Mule deer there to greet me.

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From Dr. Zhivago

 “The people who once delivered mankind from the yoke of paganism, and have now devoted themselves in such great numbers to freeing it from social evil, are powerless to free themselves from themselves, from being faithful to an outlived, antediluvian designation, which has lost its meaning; they cannot rise above themselves and dissolve without a trace among others, whose religious foundations they themselves laid, and who would be so close to them if only they knew them better. 

“Persecution and victimization probably oblige them to adopt this useless and ruinous pose, this shamefaced, self-denying isolation, which brings nothing but calamities, but there is also an inner decrepitude in it, many centuries of historical fatigue. I don’t like their ironic self-encouragement, humdrum poverty of notions, timorous imagination. It’s as irritating as old people talking about old age and sick people about sickness. Do you agree?” 

“I haven’t thought about it. I have a friend, a certain Gordon, who is of the same opinion.”

Long Beach: Sophie Marceau

Long Beach. Belmont Shore. Bayshore Dr. Sophie Marceau film "Lost & Found" (not her best) was partly shot here. We talked to a resident there (last weekend) and she said the building used to be a hotel (when? now it's an apartment bldg) and the small side building (3rd pic) was the office.

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Ann Arbor: Summer 2019

 Ann Arbor (Summer 2019) = A-Squared. Had a cheap Airbnb (felt like student days) and walked around for a day and night (I remember a wonderful summer storm). Ubered to DTM before the sun rose.

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From Dr. Zhivago

 “Of all things Russian I now love most the Russian childlikeness of Pushkin and Chekhov, their shy unconcern with such resounding things as the ultimate goals of mankind and their own salvation. They, too, understood all these things, but such immodesties were far from them—not their business, not on their level! Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky prepared for death, were anxious, sought meaning, summed things up, but these two till the end were distracted by the current particulars of their artistic calling, and in their succession lived their lives inconspicuously, as one such particular, personal, of no concern to anyone, and now that particular has become common property and, like still unripe apples picked from the tree, is ripening in posterity, filling more and more with sweetness and meaning.”

From Dr. Zhivago

 “At first, in spring and summer, it was very hard. We were exhausted. Now, in the winter evenings, we rest. We gather around the lamp, thanks to Anfim, who provides us with kerosene. The women sew or knit, I or Alexander Alexandrovich reads aloud. The stove is burning, I, as the long-recognized stoker, keep an eye on it, so as to close the damper in time and not lose any heat. If a smoldering log hampers the heating, I take it out all smoky, run outside with it, and throw it far off into the snow. Scattering sparks, it flies through the air like a burning torch, lighting up the edge of the black, sleeping park with its white quadrangles of lawn, lands in a snowdrift, hisses, and goes out. 

“We endlessly reread War and Peace, Evgeny Onegin and all the poems, we read The Red and the Black by Stendhal, A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens, and the short stories of Kleist.”

Versailles: Hall of Mirrors

 Versailles (2019). Hall of Mirrors.

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