...that I just don't know how I get anything done. Some days, I don't.
Here's an article about the use of beta blockers in sports. Beta blockers help nervous athletes by tamping down the physiological signs of their nerves (the shaking hands, etc). Some people say this is cheating, but author Carl Elliott argues that beta blockers level the playing field. Rather than conferring an extra advantage, they make up for a deficiency, bringing nervous athletes up to the level of calm ones.
This anti-nostalgia article features an astonishing portrait of the author as a young woman in the 1950s. She is walking through what looks like a dystopian fantasy London--empty streets, dense pollution, an unleashed and unattended dog running like a wolf into the silent road. Further down, a picture of indifferently-cared-for children standing in a trash-strewn street help make her point that "if things aren't what they used to be, then thank heavens for that."
And here's Michael Dirda's review of Julian Barnes' new book about death. I don't think this is a good topic for people to write about. I don't think it helps them. Somehow these things always reek of neurosis to me. The problem is, books about death are inevitably books about life--or more precisely, about the frantic fear that we're not getting enough out of it. Enough experience, enough delight--but really, finally, enough status. Very few people who write this kind of thing ever weep over the tragedy that they'll never understand particle physics or Wittgenstein. Barnes, by contrast, wallows in the indifference that "those who have never heard of you--which is, after all, almost everybody" will feel towards his passing. That's meant to seem stoical. In my opinion, it's a narcissistic complaint.
The line between wanting to do something meaningful in the world, to touch whoever you can in whatever way your fate or your gifts allow, versus wanting to be known or regarded in a neurotic/narcissistic way, is bright but unsteady. Contemplating death as such does not help our easily-confused minds and emotions stay on the right side of it.
But the second-to-last paragraph of this review is actually quite beautiful and haunting. It describes people whose last words were of the moment--a famous critic telling his nurse "You have beautiful hands;" A.E. Houseman assessing his last shot as "Beautifully done."
Anna Pavlova is reported to have said "Bring me my swan costume." Some people say that it was, "Play that last measure softly."
A very dear friend of mine died a good fourteen years ago now, but he was just at a party I attended in July. I kept seeing him in the corner of my eye. I would turn towards him, not in shock or disbelief but in the calm knowledge that I was going to find his eyes. Of course, I could never quite reach him; but he was there.
I felt a pleasant lightness around him, an everyday radiance. He's doing well. Happy.
