Should children have a best friend?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/17/fashion/17BFF.html?hpw=&pagewanted=all

This is some freaky stuff…

Ravelstein

“The challenge of modern freedom, or the combination of isolation and freedom which confronts you, is to make yourself up. The danger is that you may emerge from the process as a not-entirely human creature”

--Saul Bellow, “Ravelstein,” p. 132

Christ, I love this book. I like it more knowing that Ravelstein is more or less Bloom in literary form. I like thinking about such amazing, brilliant friendships, like Bellow and Bloom’s. The brilliant political philosopher and the nobel-winning author. Both such prodigious figures.

I need to go hunting for interesting people. I assume this will be easier when I’m not in Damascus, but it’s not impossible from here. After all, I have the internet.

Went to Richard and Renee’s bakery today, Sweet Sin. Richard offered to give me all the wall space I wanted if I ever wanted to sell art. I think I’ll take him up on it.

Man, I really need to get my hands on more Greene

“When you visualized a man or woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity — that was a quality God’s image carried with it. When you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how their hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination.”

— Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory (NY: Viking, 1940, 1971), p. 131.