Some chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken of, a tall, newlanded mariner, encountered in New Bedford at the inn.

When on that shivering winter’s night, the Pequod thrust her vindictive bows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see standing at her helm but Bulkington! I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon the man, who in mid-winter just landed from a four years’ dangerous voyage, could so unrestingly push off again for still another tempestuous term. The land seemed scorching to his feet. Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs; this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington. Let me only say that it fared with him as with the storm-tossed ship, that miserably drives along the leeward land. The port would fain give succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that’s kind to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship’s direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through. With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing, fights ‘gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed sea’s landlessness again; for refuge’s sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe!

Know ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?

But as in landlessness alone resides highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God- so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land! Terrors of the terrible! is all this agony so vain? Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing- straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!

How is addiction to other people different from  other addictions? In our world, addiction to other  people—especially addiction to sex partners—is the  only addiction that is applauded and embraced. Few  parents will be thrilled to hear that their child is binge  drinking, using drugs, or taking out college loans and  gambling them away. Most parents are delighted to  find that their child has had many romantic partners.  Few of us want to drink too much or become drug addicts or rack up unmanageable credit card debt, but most of us want to fall in love. 

(…)

The normal brain is set up to have a dopamine rush during sex because sex is one of  those behaviors that enable us to survive. But then, in some people, at some times, something goes  wrong. Some sexual experiences appear to have the same effect as a dopamine spike. People for whom  this happens are at risk for an intense addiction to other people. Do some people enjoy sex more than others? Does sex have some emotional or physical charge for some that it lacks for others? Why are  some people able to go through life sleeping with  one or two partners, while others seem insatiable  when it comes to sexual partners? “We all think we can control our actions,” Volkow says, “but why does one person have such intense cravings that they experience a loss of control, while another person can overpower these desires?” 

(…)

For a while when I  was in my fifties, I was entirely obsessed with a man named Bob. The obsession lasted a year or more. I  thought about him, talked about him, remembered our times together, and imagined new times together  almost every waking minute. Once the obsession  lifted—and this was after a painful and lengthy  process of breaking up—I was amazed at what I had gone through. I didn’t share much with him. He disapproved of my friends, and they returned the favor. He was jealous of my children and dismissive of my work. Being with him didn’t make my life better or help the things I really cared about. What was I  thinking? 

(…)

The way people in  twelve-step programs describe this is that they say  they have a disease of more. Whatever feels good  hooks them. If it’s good, they want more of it. More  and more. 

(…)

As we talk and as he describes the way different addictions pair with and nestle inside each other, I  am thrown back on an old theory of my own. Maybe  there are two kinds of people: addicts and nonaddicts. Perhaps the substance is beside the point, something chosen because of a variety of factors like availability and acceptability by the culture and a particular brain chemistry.

(…)

In New York City where I live, it is fashionable for  women to complain that there are no available men,  and as the slaves to fashion that they are, they do  complain. I’ve noticed that what they mean is that  there are no available men with handsome faces and  lean bodies within the age range of one to five years  older than they are with an income significantly larger  than their own. There are certainly plenty of men in  New York. I’ve also noticed that many of these  women are far happier, more serene, doing better  work, having more fun raising their children single  than they were when they were married. For every  woman who complains that there are no men, there  are two women who complain about the man they  have. The contentment of the single woman in our  society is one of our best-kept secrets. 

Susan Cheever , Desire: Where Sex Meets Addiction

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

The large size original, Die Kämpfende Amazone (1897), not surprisingly, though not through any fault of its own, caught the eye of that great art connoisseur, Göring (him, whom the word “culture” made reach for his gun — something tells me he would have liked the decor of Chantilly), and graced his country residence of Carinahall; as punishment for her dirty wartime association, she has now been exiled to Eberswalde. Where she still takes aim at Achilles.

During all the time that he  and Sophia lived at the Manse on the edge of  Concord, “he was not seen,” wrote George  William Curtis, “probably, by more than a dozen of the villagers,” despite regular walks to the post office—although invariably through woods  coming and going, not along the public road.

The  truth was, as Hawthorne admitted: except for  Sophia’s companionship he was content to be by  himself. “I think,” he explained to her, “I was always more at ease alone than in any body’s  company, till I knew thee.” 

Philip McFarland, Hawthorne in Concord: Nathaniel Hawthorne

• 

• 

Francis Picabia Paris 1879 – Paris 1953

Sixteenth century miniatures of ragamala – raga representations — show raga Yaman as a “lord in white garments and pearl necklace on a splendid lion-throne, under a royal umbrella, fanned with whisk, chewing betel”. It is an evening raga, meaning it is on the one hand calm — that is bringing the relaxation of the evening after a hot day filled with activity; and, on the other, an open, welcoming raga, a raga open to whatever the night will bring (after all, the concert is just beginning and will last till dawn).

There is a sixteenth century lyric associated with it:

are dost, mere premee
ke bina mujhe shaanti
nahin milee din
ke kisee bhee
kshan mein

अरे दोस्त, मेरे प्रेमी
के बिना मुझे शान्ति
नहीं मिली दिन
के किसी भी
क्षण में

Hey friend, without my lover
I don't find peace
At any moment of the day;
Since my lover went away
I spend my nights counting the stars

The North Wall contains two large stained glass panels; or, more properly, painted glass panels; authored by unknown, but dating to 1509. Here are four fragments of the said two panels.

• 

• 

• 

• 

Three white eagles? Whose ensign is that?

In dusk, in a passage-way, a brutal-looking man, gigantic in every dimension but height, a bucket-sized, bullet-shaped head, hands like 2 kilogram loaves of bread, a massive, barrel shaped torso; decked out in the obligatory Anatolian black; speaking slowly and calmly on the phone in Turkish — one of the world’s most beautiful and mellifluous languages. The contrast of the man’s brutal appearance and the calming softness of his speech.

• 

• 

At the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, an exhibition on Rembrandt. Two arresting works. A Man in a Tall Hat, now in Innsbruck, by Rembrandt; and A Moor’s Head, by his student Gerrit Dou, now in Hanover. The photo of The Man, found in the internet, does convey something of the attention-grabbing light modeling of the painting, though it is missing the rather extraodinary wooden frame; the photo of The Moor, also found in internet, does no justice at all to the warm glow of the boys skin, or the texture and sheen of his lips; and the way black lips show stripes of blood-pink through the dark pigment.

For all the WW2 destruction Koeln has suffered, and the pitched tank battle fought in front of it in March 1945, incredibly, most of the stained glass has survived. These three window, from the central chapel of the ambulatory, features the oldest stained glass in the Cathedral, dating to 1260 (center panel) and two (left and right) from the following hundred years.

Many panels in the ambulatory feature the layout of the two side panels: a busy architectural arrangement in the lowest 1/3 of the panel, usually with figures; and a geometric all-over pattern in the upper 2/3’s. In this, they look like many South East Indian sarongs: it is apparently one good solution to the decorative problem presented by long, vertical shapes. (Unrelated systems presented with identical problem evolve similar solutions).

The geometric patterns of the stained glass windows have a mesmerising effect on a mind schooled in admiring the geometric intricacies of Javanese and Burmese sarongs, sending it on a long spell of mindless staring.

The aesthetic experience — let’s call it rapture — is a lot like riding a bicycle, one gets better at it with practice.

Aesthetes slide into their pleasure the way experienced monks slide into no-mind meditation.